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# Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control
- URL: https://werd.io/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/
- Published: 2023-11-17T00:47:42.000Z
- Updated: 2023-11-17T00:47:42.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: NotableLinks, #Import 2025-06-13 09:20

"The blueprint for modern digital computing was codesigned by Charles Babbage, a vocal champion for the concerns of the emerging industrial capitalist class who condemned organized workers and viewed democracy and capitalism as incompatible."

"Babbage documented his ideas on labor discipline in his famous volume On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, published a year before Britain moved to abolish West Indian slavery. His work built on that of Adam Smith, extolling methods for labor division, surveillance, and rationalization that have roots on the plantation."

File this - all of this - under "things about the industry I've worked in for 25 years that I absolutely didn't know". How can we build on a better foundation? [#Technology](https://werd.io/tag/Technology)

\[[Link](https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/)\]