최근 스마트폰 중독과 빅테크의 지배에 반발하는 '러다이트(Luddite)' 운동이 Z세대를 중심으로 부상하고 있습니다. 본 기사는 실제 쓰레기로 만들어진 러다이트 페스티벌의 대변인 인형인 '고와누스'와의 인터뷰를 통해 이运动的 실체를 다룹니다. 짧은 숏폼 콘텐츠를 거부하고 온전한 몰입을 주장하는 이들의 철학은 디지털 피로감에 지친 현대인들에게 시사하는 바가 큽니다.
번역된 본문
미디어 인형인 고와누스(Gowanus)는 아마 나와 대화하는 것조차 달가워하지 않을 것입니다. 말 그대로 쓰레기로 만들어진 그—브루클린의 동명 지역에서 이름을 따온 쓰레기통에서 태어났다는 탄생 배경을 가졌다—는 이달 초 뉴욕에서 열린 러다이트(Luddite, 기술 발전을 반대하는 사람들) 축제인 'Summer of Ludd'의 미디어 대변인입니다. WIRED가 참석했던 이 축제에는 오프라인에서 플러팅(이성에게 접근)하는 방법에 대한 워크숍부터, 빅테크가 자신들의 삶에 어떤 부정적인 영향을 미쳤는지 사람들이 증언을 제출할 수 있는 증거함까지 모든 것이 있었습니다. 이 축제의 규칙은 간단했습니다: '온전히 현재에 머물 것'. 휴대폰, 녹음, 사진 촬영은 일절 금지되었습니다.
따라서 철학적으로 볼 때, 콘데 나스트(Condé Nast)의 맨해튼 사무실에 위치한 팟캐스트 녹음 스튜디오에 있는 것은 고와누스의 신념과 다소 상충합니다. 하지만 그는 실용적인 입장을 취하며, 사람들에게 다가가기 원하기 때문에 대중이 있는 곳에서 그들을 만날 의향이 있다고 말합니다. 그럼에도 그는 손으로 직접 쓴 계약서를 통해 몇 가지 조건을 제시했습니다. 즉, 사람들이 전체 인터뷰에 온전히 집중하도록 유도하기 위해 프로그램의 짧은 숏폼 영상을 만들지 말라는 것이었습니다. 타협안으로, 우리는 고와누스가 계약서를 설명하는 부분만큼은 짧게 클립(clip)으로 만들기로 합의했습니다.
'Summer of Ludd'와 그 배후의 운동이 왜 인형으로 대표되는지 궁금할 것입니다. 이는 19세기 초 산업혁명 시기 동안 기계로 대체되는 것에 반대하여 익명으로 조직했던 원조 러다이트들인 영국 직물 노동자들에 대한 헌사입니다. 이후 '러다이트'라는 용어는 기술을 반대하는 사람을 비하하는 방식으로 굳어졌지만, 지금은 르네상스가 일어나고 있으며—놀랍게도 Z세대에 의해 크게 수용되고 있습니다. 고와누스는 이러한 성장하는 트렌드 배후에 있는 사람들에게 익명성을 부여합니다.
나는 실제 생활에서 현대판 러다이트가 어떻게 작동하는지 궁금했습니다. 심지어 이 인터뷰를 기획하는 것도 도전이었습니다. 왜냐하면 Summer of Ludd 관계자들이 이메일에 그리 빠르게 회신하지 않았기 때문입니다. 그리고 나는 역사상 최초로 완전히 온라인 환경에서 자란 세대가 왜 스크린 타임을 줄이는 데 앞장서고 있는지 알고 싶었습니다.
마니샤 크리샨: 바로 본론으로 들어가서 질문을 드리겠습니다. 당신은 왜 인형인가요?
고와누스: 오, 정말 훌륭한 질문이네요. 음, 아시다시피 우리는 초디지털화된 시대에 살고 있습니다. 원조 러다이트들은 철저히 익명이었습니다. 1800년대에 사람들을 조직하고 자동화에 맞서 싸울 때, 그들은 왕실이나 지역 민병대 등의 억압에 직면해 있었기에 익명성을 추구했습니다. 그래서 익명성을 유지하고 운동의 구심점이 되는 인물을 만들지 않기 위해, 우리는 인형 즉 '미디어 인형'을 만들었습니다. 그게 바로 저입니다. 안녕하세요, 저는 고와누스입니다.
마니샤 크리샨: 오늘 저를 위해 손으로 쓴 계약서를 가져오셨네요. 무슨 내용인지 말씀해 주시겠어요?
고와누스: 본질적으로 이 인터뷰를 짧은 형태의 숏폼 콘텐츠로 만들지 말아 달라는 당신과 WIRED에 대한 요청입니다. 우리는 숏폼 콘텐츠가 가치 있다고 믿지 않습니다. 우리는 사람들이 주의를 기울이고 전체 인터뷰를 시청하는 데 실제로 시간을 투자하길 바랍니다. 단순한 클릭과 좋아요, 그리고 무심코 스크롤을 지나치는 것을 원하지 않습니다. 그것이 핵심입니다.
마니샤 크리샨: 저 역시 사람들이 긴 호흡의 콘텐츠를 접하도록 장려하는 것에는 동의합니다. 하지만 동시에 우리 프로그램을 홍보하는 데 숏폼이 사용되기도 하잖아요. 그렇다면 우리가 어떤 형태의 소셜 미디어든 홍보에 사용하는 것도 반대하시나요?
고와누스: 절대 그렇지 않습니다. 우리는 모든 사람들에게 다가가고 싶기 때문입니다. 대부분의 사람들이 소셜 미디어에 많은 시간을 보내고 있으며, 특히 이 메시지를 꼭 들어야 하는 사람들은 만성적으로 온라인에 접속해 있는 사람들이기 때문입니다. 그것은 전혀 괜찮으며, 우리는 그들이 있는 곳에서 그들을 만나길 원합니다. 하지만 러다이트 운동에는 무언가에 진정으로 시간을 내고 주의를 기울이는 실천이 있죠. 무언가에 참여할 때 단순히 스크롤을 훑고 지나가면서 '오, 이건 짧은 유튜브 쇼츠네' 하고 보는 것이 아니라, '한번 볼까?' 하다가 휙 지나가버리는 것이 아니라 말이죠.
Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Gowanus the media puppet probably shouldn’t even be talking to me. Made of literal garbage—his origin story is that he was born in a dumpster in his namesake neighborhood in Brooklyn—he’s the media representative for the Summer of Ludd, a Luddite festival that took place in New York earlier this month. The festival, which WIRED attended , included everything from workshops on how to flirt IRL to an evidence box, where people could submit testimonies on how Big Tech has negatively impacted their lives. Its rules were simple: Be present. No phones, recordings, or photographs allowed. So, philosophically speaking, it is somewhat contrary to Gowanus’ beliefs to be in a podcast recording studio at Condé Nast’s Manhattan offices. But he’s pragmatic, telling us he wants to reach people, so he’s willing to meet them where they’re at. Still, he has some conditions—presented to me on a handwritten contract. Namely, that we not clip short-form video of the show, in an effort to encourage people to engage with the full interview. In a compromise, we agree to only clip Gowanus explaining the contract. You might be wondering why Summer of Ludd and its movement are represented by a puppet. It’s a nod to the original Luddites , British textile workers who anonymously organized against being replaced by technology during the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. While the term “Luddite” has since become a derogatory way to refer to someone who opposes technology, there’s a renaissance happening—and it’s surprisingly being heavily embraced by Gen Z. Gowanus offers anonymity to the people behind the growing trend. I was curious about how being a modern-day Luddite works in practical terms—even organizing this interview was a challenge, because the Summer of Ludd folks weren’t necessarily quick to reply to emails. And I wanted to know why the first generation to ever grow up totally online seems to be leading the charge on having less screen time. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. MANISHA KRISHNAN: Gowanus, thank you for joining me. GOWANUS: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. So I'm gonna jump right in and ask, why are you a puppet? Oh, that is a phenomenal question. Well, you know, we live in a hyper-digitized age. And the original Luddites were completely anonymous. When they were going around in the 1800s organizing people, fighting automation, they sought anonymity because they were facing the oppression of the Crown, of local militias, things like that. So in the spirit of retaining anonymity and not creating movement figureheads and things like that, we made a puppet, a media puppet. And that's me. Hi, I’m Gowanus. So you brought a handwritten contract for me today. Can you tell me what it says? It's essentially an ask for you and WIRED to not make any short-form content of this interview. We believe in short-form content, right? We want people to pay attention and actually commit time to watching the whole interview. You know, we don't want clicks and likes and scrolls past and things like that. So that's essentially it. I mean, I'm with you on wanting to encourage people to get into long-form, but at the same time, that is how we promote this show. So are you against us promoting it on any form of social media? Definitely not. Because we wanna reach people, everybody. Most people spend a lot of their time on social media, and the people who particularly need to hear this message often are chronically online. That's totally OK, and we wanna meet them where they are. But there is a practice, right, of the Luddite movement of really taking time and giving your attention to things, right? If you're gonna engage with something, not, like, scrolling past it, being like, “Oh, this is a little YouTube Short,” right? “I'll look at it,” and then shoop , it's gone into the ether. Shoop , next thing. Next thing, a frog eating a chicken nugget, whatever. Shoop , right? So we're trying to engage people and pull them into, “OK, actually, let's sit down for this 30, 40 minutes and hear the entirety of our critique.” You've already referenced this, but I feel like most people hear Luddite and they think of people who are against tech or afraid of tech. But actually it dates back to the Industrial Revolution, with English workers who were protesting exploitative working conditions. So in modern times sometimes calling someone a Luddite is kind of an insult. Do you think that's still the case? This is a very interesting question because you're right, it's a totally pejorative term, right? Like, a Luddite is somebody who's bad at technology, often doesn't know how to move files around on their MacBook or things like that. Or someone who's seen as anti-tech, right? It's almost like saying “caveman.” One thing that we really found coming out of the Summer of Ludd is that people started to have a new framework and a new understanding of, OK, what does it mean to be a modern Luddite, right? And we really believe that to be a modern Luddite is to have a deeper critique of technology that's really been lost. A lot of what's broadly accepted is technology equals progress, sort of by any means necessary, right? The sort of founding mantra of Silicon Valley was “move fast and break things. No matter what we make, the technology will be the progress, and that will forward society,” yada, yada, yada. I think people are really waking up to the fact that actually a lot of this tech is extractive, is taking away natural resources like with data centers, is actually not necessarily needed in terms of social media. Like, the whole billing of social media was, “OK, let's be more connected on a global scale,” right? And what we're seeing more and more is actually mass loneliness, atomization, things that just make Gowanus so depressed. But, sorry, coming back to the word Luddite, a critique of technology, right? A look at technology that is not coming from a stance of neutrality. Every technology is progressive. Every technology is sort of apolitical. WIRED investigates all of these technologies and who do they actually serve? Do they serve people? Do they serve Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Big Tech oligarchs? Are you finding that the people who are joining this movement are people who are giving up tech, or is it a lot of people who never embraced tech to begin with? I would say it's a total mix. Tech is so ingrained in so many people's lives, and we also had people come to the Summer of Ludd who have never had a phone. Or have never been online in 20 years. There's a sort of a range of ways to be a Luddite, right? There's no sort of one-size-fits-all. A lot of the reporting really likes to hone in on “OK, Gen Z, we're getting flip phones,” you know? It’s kind of a consumer-based narrative. But what we’ve shown with the Summer of Ludd is actually what we’re doing is creating an in-person community. We’re bringing people back into public space, and it goes beyond the current idea, which is really about digital detox. “I'm going to pare down my personal relationship to the internet, to my phone, to social media,” to whatever it is. And the way that we do this is we do a lot of events communally. We have something called Delete Day, where we acknowledge getting off Instagram , getting off Hinge, getting off whatever it may be, whatever app is ailing you, is actually hard to do. There's a certain reliance that we all have on these things. The best way to do that is to do it with a group of people, right? And to actually sort of commit to, OK, we're all gonna sit in a circle. We're each gonna delete an app off of someone else’s phone and do it together. And learn about why is Instagram extractive? Or wh