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Luddites Shall Inherit the Earth

Someone will have to call our landlines to tell us it’s ours now.

Credit...Jordan Awan

Ms. Frazier writes humor and fiction.

Luddites, welcome.

I speak to you today at a moment of tremendous change. A moment that many of us in our movement could never have anticipated during the brief legal trouble following the floppy disk bonfire of ’02. Look at how far we’ve come.

Our convention has gone from a few conference rooms at the Indianapolis Marriott to a few conference rooms at the Indianapolis Marriott colloquially called “the New Davos.”

I admit, I was surprised. I have always been a staunch, unapologetic Luddite. But in recent months I have understood that our members — many of you sitting here in this room today — are unique. Not only because of our knowledge of disposal methods for cassette-tape ribbon, but because we are among the few people on earth whose personal information and image in perpetuity hasn’t become the profit-making property or political weapon of large corporations, the Russian government or whatever side WikiLeaks is on at the moment.

For weeks, my landline has been ringing with reporters asking one question: How we did it. And I twirl the phone cord around my finger and answer, “I don’t know, two-finger typing?”

Luddites, as I stand before you today, our savings and financial information remain untouched at community banks, our credit scores are so low they’re high, and our hard-copy photos are so secure that the spring “Smash Apple Products” orgy is nothing more than a legend.

Chief executives and world leaders have been calling me, too, requesting meetings on private planes. And as soon as I discuss the matter with my travel agent of 15 years, I’m airborne. They want to know how I became the president of the National Association of Luddites. And I tell them about the afternoon in grade school when I didn’t comprehend how to operate the Pac Man arcade game and spent the afternoon hiding in the ball pit. I emerged out of that pit after the lights had gone off and the arcade had closed, two jawbreakers and a security blanket in my hands, and at that moment I knew — I was never going back.

I have to admit, there were moments when the money I spent on stamps, the hours I spent roaming the streets looking for a typewriter repair shop, and the missed Facebook announcement of the birth of my niece made me discouraged. Every time I had to explain in an interview why I wrote “cursive” under skills, I wondered if I’d been right in assuming the internet would be a passing a fad. But now I feel wise, I feel strong, knowing that I am one of the few humans left on earth with the ability to make eye contact.

“How do I become a Luddite?” people ask. “Can you send me a link to sign up?” No, but I can send you a card by Postal Service, and you can check the “Yes” box beside “I want to become a new member” and write a description of your face in the space provided, and in eight to 10 business days you should receive a membership card in the mail with a hand-drawn identifying sketch.

To those of you joining our conference for the first time this year, I think you’ll find the face-to-face conversations and ubiquitous, screeching mic feedback a good example of what we at the National Association of Luddites have to offer.

We Luddites aren’t all about the past. We’re also about the future: a future in which we suddenly hold, in our fingers we use as calculators, above our wrist watches we use to tell time, an inordinate amount of global power.

How do we plan to use it?

Stick around to find out. Just give us 15 minutes to set up the slide projector.

Cora Frazier is a writer and editor.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Luddites Shall Inherit the Earth. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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