Brian Merchant

Published: 18 Oct 2026

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

Blood in the Machine book cover

Blood in the Machine is a well-intentioned book aiming to dispel some myths and negative misconceptions around the Luddites with a sympathetic retelling of their history. It is comprehensive, and the main highlights are around how modern-day technical arguments and discussions were all worked out at the first attempt in a world where automation, industrialisation and the concept of a “working class” was in its infancy. However, despite this, I found the book flawed in other areas:

The retelling of the Luddite story involved many threads and numerous persons of interest, ranging from the inventors/entrepreneurs beginning the Industrial Revolution, the skilled craftsmen being ‘obsoleted’ by these machines, the unskilled and indentured servitude child labour replacements, the Prince Regent and the current UK Government, as well as a few famous Luddite sympathisers such as Lord Byron and Mary Godwin. Its a lot to juggle and keep track of, and quite often it feels you get lost in the weeds reading a full chronological retelling - with some being a little repetitive (a lot of snippets of the Luddites raiding one factory after another in similar fashion) and some feeling a little more tangential (e.g. Byron’s liberal sympathies but quick political disillusionment, Godwin’s Frankenstein being derived from the Luddite struggle) that perhaps could have been sidelined or at least condensed to their own chapter, rather than being interwoven with everything else.

For all the threads, there was also another small, underdeveloped thread leading to the USA and its usage of slavery to fuel the raw materials (i.e. Cotton) for the Industrial Revolution, something that could have been developed more or left out entirely.

Furthermore, I found the re-contexualization of the Luddites in the modern day, outside of the detailing how many of the arguments of new technology and automation mirror the arguments we have today, fairly weak. Part of that is simply due to current day’s technology (AI, mainly) moving so quickly but also that the book cites names (e.g. Andrew Yang) and movements that are relatively ‘quaint’ (for a lack of a better word) compared to the current day. Combine this with some potentially unhelpful conflation of all technology as “automation” akin to factory work cloud the connections of the Luddites to the modern day somewhat.

Finally, there’s some hints towards technology being a potential force for good instead of bad, and the Luddites being wholly aware of the technological benefits provided they can work alongside it/reap some of the rewards, combined with the innovators dilemma of machinery being created to solve real problems in a more altruistic fashion than it ends up being used (its emphasised that sewing garments and spinning thread by hand was extremely time-consuming) - with the usage of machines being warped by the budding ideology of capitalism/laissez-faire/free-market ideologies fuelled by Adam Smith’s work and becoming the ideology of choice for the English ruling class, but I felt this connection was rather weak outside to trying to emphasise/dispel the myth that Luddites didn’t hate any and all technology.

In total, I found this an interesting read nonetheless, going over some underappreciated and poorly understood (deliberately poorly in many cases) history and making a real sympathetic case for the Luddites, but also contained a lot of flab and flaws that cloud the core retelling of the Luddite revolt, especially when comparing them to the modern day.