Vonnegut wrote a Foreword in The Vonnegut Encyclopedia: An Authorized Compendium, compiled by Marc Leeds and originally published in 1994. A revised and updated edition with an additional foreword by Mark Vonnegut was released in 2016.
Summary[]
The Leader of the Luddites, 1812
Ned Ludd, an early nineteenth century working-class Englishman, smashed the machinery that had made his skills redundant. The term "Luddite" now means one mistrustful of technology, which Vonnegut applies to himself. Like many Luddites, he has ironically found himself a beneficiary of technological advances. His work, first produced on ink and paper, can now be conveyed by insubstantial electrons.
His most recent work, Fates Worse Than Death, is no longer terribly recent. In his then in-progress novel, Timequake—which he has been unable to complete—Vonnegut discusses how compact, readily available electronic devices externalize all the amusing or economically valuable things human beings can do, including memory. Now that his friend Professor Marc Leeds has fed the words of Vonnegut's work into a computer, some machine will continue to remember them both, whether or not any humans bother to care anymore.[1]
See Also[]
- "Vonnegut and Clancy on Technology", which also reflects Vonnegut's mid-1990s views of the expansion of technology
- "Old-Fangled Gadgets", another mid-1990s article on technology replacing social relationships
- ↑ "Foreword", The Vonnegut Encyclopedia: An Authorized Compendium, Marc Leeds, pg. vii.