Smartphone design has been getting worse and worse while the industry itself has become an environmental and humanitarian nightmare, writes Phineas Harper.

Ned Ludd probably didn't exist. The mythical textiles worker, thought to have led daring acts of 18th-century industrial sabotage, was, most likely, as real as Robin Hood ? a fictional folk hero to rally a political cause behind.
His followers were very real though. The Luddites were concerned that new automated weaving machines were fuelling inequality and deteriorating manufacturing standards. Unable to challenge their wealthy factory-owning bosses and denied voting rights, the disgruntled workers destroyed the machines that threatened their world, declaring "Ned Ludd did it". When the best inventions of modern life are getting worse year-on-year, something has gone wrong
For over two centuries the media has worked hard to discredit the Luddites, turning their name into a byword for those who oppose any and all technological development. But this characterisation is wrongheaded. The activists were not anti-technology itself, but against the way powerful magnates used their new machines to control communities and churn out bad products.
Like the plucky young Americans in Daniel Goldhaber's 2022 thriller How To Blow Up A Pipeline, the Luddites understood that not all new technology automatically brings new benefits. In the wrong hands, some technology causes profound harm and must be challenged ? or even smash...