Alan Rusbridger's cinematic description of how, back in July, two GCHQ security experts oversaw the destruction of hard drives in the basement of the Guardian's offices was symbolic of many things. Amnesty called it "sinister". It made me think of the Luddites.

We're almost halfway through the bicentennial of the Luddite uprisings (1811-1817). Part of a wave of working class discontent emerging in the wake of the harsh economic climate of the Napoleonic wars, the Luddites are best known for smashing looms and the word Luddite is now commonly used to denote someone opposed to, possibly fearful of, technological progress. But Luddite activism was really more about who got to control technology than being opposed to any technology itself. As a 2011 Guardian editorial noted, Huddersfield Luddite, George Mellor directed his followers to "leave the machines, shoot the masters".

A cynic might argue that the traditional painting of Luddites as somewhat ignorant and simply scared of progress is a version of history perpetuated by those who would rather we didn't question the machines of our masters. I'd have some sympathy with that cynic, because the Luddites were not anti-technology in general, and the word is all too often used to close down debate about what we want progress to look like.

Many of us have been tempted to take hammers to one hard drive or another (tip if you do: Rusbridger et al used angle grinders). A friend who works near Silicon Roundabout can sometimes be found muttering "smash all computers" into a large glass of whisky. Martin Zaltz-Austwick – musician, podcaster and lecturer in advanced spatial analysis at UCL – recently composed a slightly dystopic song about smashing microchips to make sand for a giant fake beach (an allegory for the stupidity of much of modernity).

But the Guardian-GCHQ smash was not a simple matter of being frustrated with the various limitations mass-produced technology routinely puts upon us. Nor was it a "shoot the masters" matter of dismantling instruments of oppression. If anything, it was the masters doing the smashing, or at least directing it, and that's significant.

With the bicentennial, some Luddite fans have tried to rehabilitate and celebrate the movement as a symbol of people power for late modernity. A blog replays the historical events; there's an active and spiky Twitter account. You'll increasingly see Luddites referenced at anti-roads or anti-GM protests. I haven't met an anti-fracking Luddite yet, but there's probably a few knocking about. Such neo-Luddites are rarely anti-technology. They tend to apply the term to challenge dominant views of progress with a focus on questioning who benefits from particular technological choice.

There are other ways we can take the Luddite story though, even without dismissing them as reactionary. David Edgerton, in his Nature essay In Praise of Luddism, invited scientists to celebrate the inner Luddite and appreciate how much of their work involves the rejection of new ideas. It's not just scientists who do this. As Edgerton's book The Shock of the Old eloquently outlines, the history of technology is much more complex than a simple march of great machines. See, for example, the 1897 electric cab currently on display at the Science Museum.

An uneasy commonality runs through most approaches to the Luddite story; they tend to be used to invite us to think about the rejection of particular technologies. Rejection, that is, as opposed to the way our interactions with machines are usually a matter of compromise, negotiation, hybridisation and reinterpretation. To paraphrase Donna Haraway, I think I'd rather be a cyborg than a Luddite.

There were echoes of King Ludd in some recent Socialist Worker coverage of 3D printing. The piece wanted to puncture hype surrounding 3D printing and stress that, for all that it might seem excitingly full of new possibilities for modes of production, the power of any new technology is most likely to be exploited by "the bosses". It concluded: "Unless we overthrow a system that reduces everything to the needs of profit, no technology will let us print our way to freedom."

There's an attractive purity to this message, but I find it ideologically reductive. As Georgina Voss quipped, "No Raspberry Pi before the revolution." While it is undoubtedly true that the various opportunities offered by 3D printing – like smart phones, the printing press or any number of innovations – will serve the status quo long before they undo it, that doesn't mean such technologies can't also be used to fight the power too. We can use and appreciate the power of a technology while also remaining cognisant of the ways it (and the social structure it sits within) may disempower, even harm, us and people we love. It's messy and involves compromise and negotiation; but social change is messy. As Rusbridger commented under his piece on Monday evening: "Smashing up computers turns out to be quite messy."

Above all, perhaps, one of the reasons the destruction of this bit of Guardian computer equipment is significant is that the materials themselves didn't really mean much; there were copies of the files in America and Brazil. In that respect, maybe it reflects the Socialist Worker's view that it's always a larger system at play.

If I was feeling hyperbolic, I might be tempted to declare this moment a mirror image of the Luddites taking hammers to looms; a rather sad smash where those in power rather fitfully demanded a somewhat pointless destruction. But it's not a sign that we've finally wrested the power of technology from our masters any more than it's an example of the Guardian meekly doing GCHQ's bidding. Indeed, that information can exist in more than one place – our digital fingerprints – and, moreover, that people may be disempowered by this, sits at the basis of the whole NSA files affair. The Guardian's smashed hard drives are probably just a moment of strategic compromise in an ongoing struggle. Or maybe the initial leaking was the real smash. I don't know.

Alice Bell is a research fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex. She wonders what King Ludd would have made of Edward Snowden.

Note: This post was edited after posting to remove a line saying Luddite George Mellor had left his body to medical science. According to the Luddite Bicentenary Twitter account, this is far from the truth. In fact, Mellor's dissection was actually part of his punishment. Mellor, along with William Thorpe and Thomas Smith, had no say over what happened to his remains, as they dissected to prevent trouble/ martyr status. You can read the Bicentenary's comment on the 2011 Guardian editorial about this, and I can recommend their blogposts on the sentencing and execution of Mellor, Thorpe and Smith. Dissection was formally proposed on Boxing Day 1812 (a fortnight before the trial) by the Military - "I conceive the bodies may be convey'd to the Infirmary at Leeds for dissection, it will be most acceptable to the Medical Practitioners there" - but it was actually the Treasury Solicitor's idea 12 days prior to that, concerned the bodies might be "triumphantly buried by their Friends." Thanks to the Luddite Bicentenary site for that. A cautionary tale to those who try to mess with the machines of our masters and an interesting example of military and medicine working together against dissent. Fascinating.