You may be interested in David Noble's work on this, see "Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation".

People do indeed slur the luddites, and I have to say, emotionally they are very sympathetic.

At the same time, they slur the industrialists, who are also caricatured. What we need to acknowledge, is that the cheaper mass produced goods allow more people to have those goods, even if they are not as good as the artisanal goods.

That is why, for example, when you have projects like trying to create a laptop for the third world, they use cheap components and make a lot of sacrifices, because a shitty laptop that you can use is better than a nice laptop you can't afford.

But it is absolutely true, that progress is not just an arrow pointing up. Progress generally means a reduction in quality and durability and often it means a reduction in beauty as well. And progress also often means replacing artisinal work with mind numbing drudgery or even unhealthy office work that humans were not meant to do, physically and psychologically. There is a real cost to progress, and people on both sides of this debate understand this cost and come to different conclusions. There is no villain here.

Another work I'd recommend is "On the Nature of the Gothic" by Ruskin. It is part of a series on Venetian Architecture Ruskin wrote, called "The Stones of Venice", and he focuses on the amazing variety, gratuitousness, and somewhat poor execution of the countless gargoyles and other flourishes that he saw when visiting Venice: https://archive.org/details/natureofgothicch00rusk/page/n9/m...

It's hard to say what the optimum is. We have cheap disposable clothes when in the past, people might own only a single suit, but it was a beautiful, handmade suit that fit them well and they could even pass onto their children. We have cheap Ikea furniture but in the past people had handmade gorgeous heirlooms they could have as family inheritances. But those were heavy and hard to move around and you were stuck with them. There are real trade offs. And when most people choose the mass produced stuff, the artisanal stuff gets more expensive also. At the same time, it can truly be soulless to be surrounded by cheap junk that you feel was made in a hostile manner to human nature. Where you fall on this depends a lot on your disposable income.