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Bertrand Russell May Not have Invented the Internet, but He Certainly Wrote the Brief For It

Bertrand Russell Wrote the Brief For It Internet

'There are two ways of writing about the future,' wrote Bertrand Russell in the 1920s,1 'the scientific and the Utopian. The scientific way tries to discover what is probable; the Utopian way sets out what the writer would like. Perhaps people will find out how to go to Mars or Venus. Perhaps almost all our food will be manufactured in chemical laboratories instead of being grown in the fields. To such possibilities there is no end. I shall ignore them, and consider only tendencies which are already well developed.

'In addition to the introduction of machinery, and largely as a result of it, there has been another change: society has become far more organised than it was formerly. Printing, railways, the telegraph and (now) broadcasting have provided the technical means for large organisations such as a modern state or an international financial business.'

With only about 15 years to go before his 100 are up, many of Russell's admittedly tentative predictions look unlikely to be realised: 'The daily press, presumably, will be killed by broadcasting. Reading may become a rare practice, its place being taken by listening to the gramophone, or to whatever better invention takes its place. Similarly, writing will be replaced, in ordinary life, by the dictaphone.'

But his underlying belief was this: that, even in the 1920s, all existing tendencies favoured the creation and growth of bigger geographical units, bigger companies and bigger organisations; and in this he has undoubtedly been proved right. And it was this development that caused Russell the  most disquiet because he found it inimical to his belief in the need for individual enterprise. 'There must be scope for constructive initiative . . . There must be no barrier to intellectual or artistic creation, nor to human relations of a constructive kind, nor to the suggestion of ways in which human life might be improved.

'This is, I must confess, the matter upon which I feel that our civilisation is most likely to go wrong. There is need for much organisation, and where there must be so much, there is almost sure to be more than there ought to be.

The harm that this will do will be the diminution of opportunities for individual effort. Vast organisations produce a sense of impotence in the individual, leading to a decay of effort. The danger can be averted if it is realised by administrators, but it is of a kind that most administrators are constitutionally incapable of realising. Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism, enough to prevent immobility leading to decay, but not enough to bring about disruption. This is a delicate problem, not theoretically insoluble, but hardly likely to be solved in the rough-and-tumble of practical affairs.'

THE POWERS THAT BE

It's interesting that Russell, having perceptively identified the problem, took it for granted that any solution could come only from the administrators. It was they, after all, who held the power; and the bigger their organisations grew, increasingly aided by the new technologies, the greater that power became.

The reasoning is close to that which says, of civil wars, that the faction that controls the media controls the country. And for 80-something of Bertrand Russell's 100 years, in countries and companies, power has been exercised from the top down. Every so many years, in democratic countries, citizens have the opportunity to eject an unpopular leader. But between elections, leaders lead and the rest of us follow. Not even opposition parties find it possible to 'inject [our lives with] a certain dose of anarchy'.

We, the people, have accepted this subservient role uncomplainingly. We accept it in hugely important matters such as the colour of our government; and we accept it in a million trivial ways such as in our meek acceptance of the validity of lists. A magazine publishes a feature on 'The 100 Most Influential People in the Universe'. There they all are, in strict rank order, as though based on some objectively derived set of bombproof metrics. We may be surprised that Madonna should outrank Kofi Annan but we sort of accept it; what else can we do?

Ever since the age of the town crier, only a fortunate minority has had access to media; and those with access to media can be challenged only by those with access to competitive media. Individuals may bitch about it all in the pub – but that, until now, has been the extent of their influence. The views of a newspaper reaching 15 million people are never going to be seriously challenged by those of a dozen saloon bar sages.

When large organisations need access to media, they buy it. They can afford to. It's called advertising or public relations. When individuals need access to media, they have to resort to stunts. Suffragettes threw themselves in front of racehorses and others dug up the cricket pitch at Headingley. But these examples simply confirm the sovereignty of existing media; they offer them no threat. You can buy your way into them; or at considerable risk, you can hijack them for a single crusade; but the media remain masters of you, not the other way round.

It's no surprise, back in the 1920s, that Bertrand Russell could see no solution to this problem. Identifying, as he did, those 'tendencies already well developed', it was clear that the costs of producing, publishing and distributing any form of mass media could only escalate – putting them further and further out of the reach of the humble citizen. How, therefore, could it be possible for individual effort to be recognised and broadcast? How could it be possible for the small and the unorganised to exercise influence?

Well, now we know. And the case of the Michelin Guide provides an illuminating example.

STARS AND SITES

For the best part of 100 years, the Michelin Guide has bestowed stars on selected restaurants. Its methods and criteria were never disclosed. Its authority (which was entirely self-created) went unchallenged. Excluded chefs might bleed and whinge; but that which Michelin said was good was held to be good and the honoured restaurants prospered.

Recently, the Michelin went to New York City. There are 23,000 restaurants in New York City – and the Guide has granted 39 of them stars. Even 10 years ago, those 39 might have been deferentially accepted as some kind of definitive judgement; just as we are prepared to accept that Madonna is a more influential person than Kofi Annan. But Michelin is not the first foodie guide to cover New York. It already has Hardens and particularly Zagats – to which 30,000 food-loving New Yorkers contribute by email and which 650,000 New Yorkers buy. There are also hugely popular online foodie sites on which anyone with an internet connection can post an opinion, at almost no cost in money or effort and often within hours of a new restaurant opening up for business.

These sites are studied as avidly as any menu and exert increasing influence.

This is not to say that New Yorkers will dismiss the Michelin Guide. The chosen 39 will undoubtedly prosper. But Michelin will not go unchallenged. Never again will its lofty presumptions be accepted on their own terms. Power, far from becoming even more remote and unassailable, is becoming more vulnerable.

Media experts argue whether blogs count as media. Of course they do. The fact that media buyers cannot buy them is irrelevant. A medium is any carrier of messages – and against all probability and all prediction, anyone who can afford to subscribe to an ISP (or can piggyback on their office computer) now has instant access to a medium that can spread their experiences, opinions and prejudices around the world with the speed and virulence of an epidemic, while collecting 100,000 supporting voices as it goes. The round robin goes galactic.

Bertrand Russell would have loved the internet. 'Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism, enough to prevent immobility leading to decay, but not enough to bring about disruption.'

That is exactly what the internet invites us all to do. And we have hardly begun to grasp its implications.

ENDNOTES

1. Russell, B. (2004) Sceptical Essays, Routledge Classics.

This article featured in Market Leader, Winter 2005.


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