Raging Against the Machine: When they smashed mechanical looms in early 1800s Britain, the followers of Nedd Ludd weren't so much protesting the introduction of machine-woven cloth in the marketplace, they were mourning the erosion of creative autonomy, according to Nicols Fox, author of "Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives." In a Washington Post review/profile (free registration required), Fox talks about her desire to reassess her relationship to technology, not as a way not to demonize machines but to reclaim humanity.