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Artists are no different than all the people who tried to destroy the cotton gin or the automated loom.I feel like this post by an HN user is pertinent[1].
> Have you ever done any reading on the Luddites? They weren't the anti technology, anti progress social force people think they were.
> They were highly skilled laborers who knew how to operate complex looms. When auto looms came along, factory owners decided they didn't want highly trained, knowledgeable workers they wanted highly disposable workers. The Luddites were happy to operate the new looms, they just wanted to realize some of the profit from the savings in labor along with the factory owners. When the factory owners said no, the Luddites smashed the new looms.
The Luddites went from middle class business owners and craftsmen to utter destitution. Many of the Luddites were tried for machine breaking and were either executed by the state, or exiled to penal colonies. They risked literally everything, because everything was at stake.
I bring this up because people like to pretend the Luddites were some cult of ignorant technophobes, but the reality is that many of us are in the same situation the Luddites were in, as highly skilled workers that operate complex machinery with comfortable middle class lives, before owners cut them out and their families starved in the streets.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33230262