When I started this podcast, I was feeling a bit gloomy about the way that technology was heading, but I wasn’t gripped by full-on panic.

Yet here we are, a year or so later, and I feel like I’ve been radicalised. Not a day goes by when there isn’t some announcement from Silicon Valley that would chill the blood of even the more rational of tech consumers. We are heading into the vortex.

This is a world that Ned Ludd predicted to me, when we first started exchanging emails more than a year ago. I haven’t heard from them in a while. I’m vaguely aware of what’s going on in their life and understanding of why they don’t feel the need to bombard me with their thoughts about how to arrest this techno-decline, but still, I feel the battle being lost. I remember something they wrote to me back at the start of this journey. “THE CAR DOESN’T GO INTO REVERSE, BUT IT MIGHT TAKE ANOTHER ROAD.”

It's not an amazing metaphor, not least because most – dare I say, all – cars do, actually, go into reverse. But the necessity for a different road still strikes me. I don’t want to just accept that all the bad things I fear will come to pass will come to pass. Can’t we do something?

The Luddites, who inspired this show, smashed up automated machinery in the 19th century. They didn’t want to lose their jobs, their livelihoods – their purposes – to new fangled automation. They’ve gone down in history as belligerent refuseniks, railing against the inevitable tide of history. But as you’ll hear in today’s discussion, they’ve had a real lasting impact on little things like labour laws and trade unions.

My guest is Mauro Lubrano, author of a new book Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Tech Extremism. Originally hailing from Italy, Mauro is now a lecturer in international relations at the University of Bath, and someone who has thought, and written, about the action that might be taken (for better or worse) against our machine overlords. Have a listen to our conversation now.

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