When the Industrial Revolution broke out in 18th-century Britain and machines replaced manual labour in the production of goods, many of the textile workers affected responded by attacking and disabling the machines.

The rebels became known as Luddites, named after “General Ned Ludd” or “King Ludd,” a mythical figure who lived in Sherwood Forest. In the more than 200 years since, this nickname has been used for anyone who resists the introduction of new technology, especially in the workplace.

Over the past half century, digital technology has driven a new industrial revolution, completely changing the nature of work by destroying old economic sectors and creating new ones.

When I began my journalistic career 64 years ago, I and other reporters wrote our stories on paper, on cast-iron Underwood typewriters. After that, the “text” was read by an editor and sometimes changed in pencil. A compositor then set it in metal type, and other workers turned it into a metal printing plate, which they installed on a huge printing press to produce newspapers.

Today I am writing this column on a Hewlett Packard computer. Almost all of the information cited in the column comes from online sources, including details of a bill from the legislature’s website and videos from CalMatters’ Digital Democracy archives.

When I’m finished, the column goes electronically to an editor who uses the same digital technology, and the finished product is then published electronically on the Internet. CalMatters exists thanks to technology, while newspapers that still produce paper editions struggle for advertising because of competition from digital rivals.

California has played a pioneering role in the new technological revolution, but it is also a center of resistance.

The bill I referred to earlier is Senate Bill 1446, which passed the Senate easily earlier this year but is now embroiled in a conflict in the National Assembly between unions and retailers, particularly grocers.

In recent years, supermarket operators have introduced kiosks that allow customers to pay themselves without having to wait in line for a cashier to physically scan the contents of their shopping cart.

In previous years, cashiers had to know the price of each item if it was not marked, or consult a paper price list. Technology in the form of barcodes has made checkout faster, but also allows customers to scan their own items and pay with a credit card.

Some stores have experimented with using scanners to determine the total amount of purchases without processing individual items and/or identifying customers by scanning their hands and linking them to a pre-determined credit card.

Technology in supermarkets has reduced the number of employees working checkout lines. The bill, SB 1446, aims to protect unionized jobs by restricting the use of self-service kiosks and setting certain staffing levels. Grocers and other retailers must also give 60 days’ notice before introducing new technologies, such as “self-service robots, wearable sensors and scanners” that “eliminate, automate or electronically monitor the core tasks” of an employee.