Fans of Romantic Era writers like Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and William Blake should expect a fulfilling 2025, with current social conditions being optimal for a 21st century rebirth of Romanticism.
Readers may consider this a bold claim: after all, the original Romantic movement, an artistic movement centering on an appreciation of nature, a yearning for the past, and critiques of industrialization, ended over 150 years ago. To many, it is hardly seen as relevant to the current cultural climate. Yet as the 2020s drag on, every new headline seems to trumpet similar societal conditions that made the original romantic movement so popular, particularly industrialization.
Beginning in England in the late 18th century, historical records make it clear that certain industries and professions were hit harder and earlier than others; notably, the large population of textile workers. For hundreds of years, these dedicated artisans had woven their fabrics by means of manual production. But by the 1780s, these skilled artisans began to be replaced by power looms and textile mills, leaving hundreds jobless and hopeless, with two choices before them: either forsake their ancestral profession and begin training for some other job, (an endeavor both expensive and difficult, especially for those later in life) or enlist in a mill. There, fabric was produced quickly and cheaply, and workers were generally unskilled laborers. Wages were low, and employee well-being was not high on the list of mill-owner priorities. Of course, these workers had another option: resistance. An organized rebellion movement developed, the Luddites. The group was known for burning down spinning mills, sabotaging textile factories, and sending threatening letters to cotton tycoons, all to protect their older, more traditional way of doing things. These acts of defiance were signed by their imaginary leader, Ned Ludd. As you could imagine, the factory owners didn’t like this, and often pursued legal action against the Luddites, if they didn’t blatantly shoot them. The Luddites were determined and persistent, but despite their best efforts, these zealous pyromaniacs gradually fell out of relevance as mass production took center stage in the 19th century. Nowadays, you’d be lucky to find an Etsy shop that sold genuinely hand-woven garments, and the word “Luddite” has become synonymous with “backwards.”
But to draw a comparison between the time of the Luddites and our current era, we have been witnessing a revolution with the potential to be equal in consequence to the Industrial Revolution: the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The AI “revolution” has undoubtedly already had a severe impact, socially and economically; a recent study from Precedence Research claimed the AI market size in 2024 to be worth 146.09 billion dollars. Nowadays, every business is scrambling to incorporate AI somehow into their model, even if it seems unrelated or even adverse to their public goals. Grammarly, Canva, Wix, YouTube, you name it, they have an AI service. Even as I type this on Google Docs, a little star sits in the corner of my screen, urging me to use Gemini AI to “Generate my next big idea” and “Power up my productivity”. This language of innovation is often used when marketing generative AI, and while AI certainly can have its uses when applied in relation to the Arts, history shows that it does more harm than good. Similar to the Luddite weavers of the Romantic Era, writers and artists are losing their jobs to this quick, new technology. AI writing and art are faster and cheaper to produce, and as such, companies and services are eager to normalize them as a part of business in the modern era. And much like the Luddites, there has been pushback, though perhaps not as extreme. Back in 2023, there was a 148-day strike organized by the Writers Guild of America. The screenwriters involved in the strike had many qualms with the film industry, but one of their chief concerns was the fear of being replaced by artificial intelligence. Unlike the Luddites, the screenwriters were able to procure an agreement, but the future of their careers is still uncertain. It begs the question, what other societal pushback will AI receive from threatened creatives? And how will larger industries react to that pushback? Only time will tell, but reactions to earlier technological revolutions can certainly give us a clue.
