What the backlash to the Industrial Revolution can teach us about handcrafts in the age of AI

pixdeluxe/Getty Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t yet causing widespread job losses in Australia.

But with some high-profile business leaders still predicting a looming unemployment “crisis” it’s little wonder many people fear AI is coming for their job.

Anxiety about automation dates back to the early days of the industrial revolution .

We know with the benefit of hindsight that the machinery of mass production ultimately did upend the lives of many workers and transform the world.

Yet today, centuries later, people haven’t stopped making things by hand; far from it.

In much of the world, handicrafts are booming .

From quilting and knitting to pottery and wood carving , many old skills are enjoying something of a resurgence among a new generation.

So, what’s behind the enduring appeal of making something by hand? And can looking to the past teach us anything about this present moment? The backlash to industrial abundance Edmund Cartwright, an English clergyman and inventor, first patented an early version of the power loom in 1785.

It took a few decades of refinement to develop this invention into a reliable machine, but its adoption ultimately redefined the textiles industry.

As the industrial revolution rolled on, a group of labour activists we now know as the “ Luddites ” protested the working conditions and job losses that resulted.

Today, the term is used to describe people generally hostile to new technologies, but this contemporary usage misses the fact that they did have a point: industrialisation did have a devastating impact on many workers and their communities.

However, responses to the industrial revolution were not only political and economic.

They were also cultural and aesthetic , and in some cases, a rejection of the cheapness of industrial abundance.

Across Europe and beyond, the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19th and early 20th century looked to craft practices, handmaking, and nature as stylistic inspiration for this most Victorian of radical politics.