Neo-Luddite England

The Neo Luddite groups believe particular technologies to be foolish to pursue. What would cause people to hate technology...lets say wars did not take place, because with wars there is often an advancement of technology. Or if wars did take place only world war 1?
 
strangely enough, I think it's much harder to achieve without wars as though they advance technology, the first use of any new technology is for the war effort and so largely to kill.

If we do have WW1, perhaps the various gases are unleashed in Britain, either by accident or design, bringing large scale death to the green and pleasant land-which results in a backlash post war?
 
So you are saying if WW1 was worse - neo luddites may stand for reason for not wanting to prevail in particular technologies, or some tech which appears innocent will take a longer time to prevail due to paranoia and caution.
 
So perhaps if I tinkered with what technologies were invented before the war, the duration of the war and came up with a few more radical weapons...so intead of world war 1 its considered the great war...where gas warfare was more advanced. Increase a political movement against the production of particular technologies.

Balance between wars and technologies which get developed and ones that do not. So ironically some technology like the plane and car seem non-existant...but then other tech like gas warfare is more advanced...and possibly other static tech developments...like an ultimate typewriter because the making of computers has been set back severely?
 
So you are saying if WW1 was worse - neo luddites may stand for reason for not wanting to prevail in particular technologies, or some tech which appears innocent will take a longer time to prevail due to paranoia and caution.

I think that's more likely than such a backlash occuring without war-unless there was some sort of massive disaster caused by a new technology.
 
I think that's more likely than such a backlash occuring without war-unless there was some sort of massive disaster caused by a new technology.

mmm so perhaps I can illustrate a world where World War one was the GREAT war...gas tech had been advanced to the state of having Agent Orange..., no plane or car tech so no tanks...thus perhaps MORE people were killed off, so instead of a nuclear cold war...we could have some crazy GAS cold war...I know it may not be truly effective...but these are backward people....they fear an attack of "Agent Rainbow" - also in this world the difference engine was made earlier on so computer technologies were made a little earlier and this also caused a big uprising...although tech never got as far as our 1950's computers...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

So this world has a hippie group, advanced looking difference machines if anything in the form of a computer...fear of Agent Rainbow, the Japanese are now becoming head of technology and have developed the first combustion engine, the radio and television is banned, but the printing press allows for particluar articles to seep through...so knowledge of old tools have been lost or miscomunicated in the process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_technology
 
So in theory do you feel that in order for the world to be less sophisticated in technology or to avoid it completely. An event prior to 1900 would have taken place?

Like an accident involving Nicola Tesla's inventions, that put a ban on future tech + combined with no world wars?
 
I think it would need a Cambodia style communist revolution.

OK, WWI goes harder, Britain loses another 50%, (1.5 million dead).
Explosion at a chemical weapons plant kills thousands in 1917.
British Communists follow a neo Luddite agrarian approach, arguing for the destruction of industry and a return to the farming nation there once on the basis that the male population has been devistated and between the deaths from German Zepplin raids and chemical weapons deaths, domestic farming can now support the population.
Mass emigration/deportation to Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand etc.

Population reduced to about 5 million in the end.
 
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