My taxi ride on the way to catch the Glasgow train yesterday turned a little surreal.
After a brief chat about the ins and outs of booking taxis using apps, the taxi driver, a chatty but slightly intense man in his fifties, announced he was a member of the Anti Technology League. He didn’t own a computer, he said. Never had. Neither did the rest of his family. He used his mobile only for calls (his refusal to engage with voicemail had led to bailiffs trying to claim a £35 debt to a company after their 13 messages went unanswered. It’s OK. That’s sorted now). He only writes letters when he needs to contact someone officially (twice, so he has a copy).
It was his membership of this Anti Technology League that really interested me. Who are they? What are their demands? What are they going to do? Why have I never heard of them? They’re not really Googleable.
I began to picture a group like the shadowy “Reality or Nothing” terrorists that Dennis Potter invented for Cold Lazarus but the truth turned out to be a little more down to earth. They campaign against any organisation, councils, businesses and so on, that pressure people to use the web to access services. They are compiling a dossier of these organisations and plan to sue them for discrimination. He was very confident of success.
We talked a little about the benefits of social media, privacy, digital literacy and the need to switch off sometimes but it was clear he was resolute.
When he proudly talked about smashing up his mobile phone when he took it back into the Vodafone shop I started to get a little nervous. I had told him what I did for a living. He said he was much happier with the deal he’d been offered by Virgin so the mood lightened.
He also said he was surprised more people hadn’t heard of them.
I wasn’t deliberately trying to be a troll when I asked if they’d considered setting up a website but the joke did fall a little flat.
But ever since then I’ve been thinking about that problem.
How would you create a campaigning organisation, spread your message, recruit members these days if one of your founding principles is based on the rejection of digital technology? It’s entirely possible at the local level or on a small scale but the Anti Technology League seemed to have loftier ambitions than that.
It was obviously possible in the pre-digital world, but are we at a point now when trying to do that without recourse to the web is nigh on impossible?
Or maybe it’s because I’m now so fully enclosed in the technology bubble I lack the imagination to see how it would work.
I might fire up the app, book another taxi and see if I can continue the conversation.
One reply on “They that move in the shadows”
“How would you create a campaigning organisation, spread your message, recruit members these days if one of your founding principles is based on the rejection of digital technology? It’s entirely possible at the local level or on a small scale but the Anti Technology League seemed to have loftier ambitions than that.”
Use the communications channels that appeals to your target audience. Adverts in the local papers, in shop windows, at bus stops, talk to people at work, down the pub, at the football. For centuries people used an oral tradition to recount narratives, the printing press allowed far greater reach.
Interestingly in the current Middle East conflict Daish have been well reported to use very traditional means of communication and strategic planning in their military campaign. These modes are not digital and are nearly impossible to intercept without field based operations to get intelligence. At the same time they use a highly sophisticated and well resourced range of social media to market themselves and support recruitment.
Maybe your suggestion that the ATL needed a website to promote their viewpoint wasn’t that far off the mark…