9th February 2022
There have been various communications revolutions in human history.
One, of course, is the development of human language – though we are still working out the extent to which this actually separates us from other animals capable of complex communications.
Another was the notion – which we appear not have had for most of the history of our species – that language can be written down and thereby stored or sent long distances.
This notion was instrumental in the development of more complex societies, as it meant for example than laws could be recorded and conveyed other than by oral tradition and transmission.
And about five hundred years ago, the development of movable type meant that things could get published and circulated on a scale that would not have been possible in days of manual reproduction of texts.
The most recent radical change in communication is one with which many reading this blog will be familiar.
In our lifetimes, when we were young, it was difficult-to-impossible to communicate with and publish to the world – unless you went through the gatekeepers of established newspapers, publishing houses or established broadcasters.
Yes: you could, perhaps, publish a vanity book, or pamphleteer outside McDonalds, or launch a pirate radio station in the North Sea.
But short of such extreme exertions, it was hard – as recently as the 1990s – to publish or broadcast whatever you wanted to the world.
And now, by reason of the internet and easy-to-use platforms, anyone with an online connection can, in principle, publish or broadcast on the widest possible scale.
We are now perhaps so familiar with this change that we forget how radical a shift this is.
And we are still reckoning the consequences.
One consequence is that our conventional ideas of politics and media are shifting – and we do not know for certain what will happen next.
The lack of gatekeepers on political discourse has a relationship with the populism-supporting figures such as Johnson and Trump.
Traditional mediating vehicles of transmission and participation – say, political parties and newspapers – are now in many respects redundant in these days of direct connections.
The law itself struggles to keep up – and our laws on social media are a hotchpotch of the unrealistic and outdated, but these laws also have no obvious alternative.
One hobgoblin of law and policy thinking is that nothing is new – we can see that the same will happen as before, as long as we know the right precedents.
How will our polity will be affected by these fundamental changes in politics, media and communications?
Will it mean a more liberal future?
Or a more authoritarian one?
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Probably more authoritarian. Hope I’m wrong, obviously. However, just as bad news travels faster than good, so too does stupidity on the internet seem to proliferate more effectively than rationality.
I’m so glad you picked this topic. But I’m also sorry for the response that follows. Wait a sec while I jump on my soap box…
According to Wikipedia (it’s important to cite your sources), the Parliament of England, and the first to invite representatives of major towns to the seat of government was Montfort’s Parliament in 1265. At the time, the fastest means of communication in the UK was, literally, a rider on a fast horse. It could take 8 days to get a letter from London to York. And another 8 to get a reply back, working on an average of 25 miles per day for a rider with no spare horse.
Given that model, a system of representative democracy isn’t just a good idea, it’s pretty much the only game in town.
But now, more than 700 years later, we can bounce emails around the planet or access web sites on the other side of the world – in seconds.
This being the case, the argument for a “representative democracy” begins to look a bit suspect. We could use smartphone applications, web sites, kiosks in public buildings, we could even use lottery terminals and pre-printed “voting slips” to directly register our preference on a huge range of issues.
I do think that the points you raise here about the relationship between elected and electorate has been immeasurably altered by modern technology. But it seems a shame that we are intent on restricting that change to only where it is shown to cause harm, and to resist applying it to where it can do good.
Obviously the cynic in me thinks that the reason our Government doesn’t like the idea of direct democracy is that it wouldn’t take long to figure out we don’t need to many MPs or that they need to claim insane amounts of expenses. We pay an awful lot of money for the theatrics of PMQs, more so when you realise that it is completely irrelevant to setting policy and completely useless at holding the governing administration to account. (“Yah!”… “Boo!” “Here, here!”)
So, yes please, let’s have an adult conversation around the polity and the media, but can we include in that a sensible discussion around how we can use modern communications technology to make democracy more directly accessible to the governed?
The history of the city state of Athens may provide some helpful illustrations of the dangers inherent in direct democracy. Although we already seem to have a form of ostracism by Twitter poll.
One hobgoblin of law and policy may be an assumption that nothing is new. Another is that things will get better. There are new things, and they are not necessarily good.
Direct democracy has a severe disadvantage. Every voter needs to learn everything about every issue. In theory a representative democracy means the representatives can have a full time jobs doing that, rather that every voter having to do it in their spare time. Just as we don’t all fix our own plumbing, service our cars, etc. Nor, when we want entertainment, do we write and perform our own music or drama. Of course the disadvantage of representative democracy is the standard agent vs principal problem – that the representatives may act in their own interests rather than the interests of the people they represent.
It occurred to me that the most recent communications revolution has a fairly radical sequel to it (if not another revolution).
Initially yes, the internet allowed anyone with a connection to, in principle, publish or broadcast on the widest possible scale. And that’s still the case.
But then subsequently, much of this publishing became mediated by algorithms – working at a huge scale – and impossible to oversee properly at this scale. And they have had drastic implications of their own, promoting some content over other content etc. So in a sense, we are once again ruled by gatekeepers – but these ones, while designed by humans, are not human, and make decisions which simply cannot be examined.
Derek,
Unfortunately it isn’t as simple as “publishing” – it is the ability to forensically analyse every aspect – *every* aspect of communication and social interaction.
Check the terms of your bank. I guarantee you that there will be small print there that allows them to analyse your social media presence and to base things like loan decisions and even interest rates on your social media postings. Got any friends who have declared bankruptcy? Your loan rate just went up. Got a few friends with speeding tickets? So did your insurance premiums.
It’s so dangerous to think of this as “publication”. You become myopic, you blind yourself to the true nature and staggering scale of the problem.
Take a listen to the testimony given by Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower. They had limited access to Facebook data and, to quote Wylie, “We know you better than you know yourself.” First person other than the participants to know you’re having an affair? Facebook. First party other than you to know you’re planning on quitting your job? LinkedIn. And, like it or not, you’re up for sale to anyone wanting to buy.
How true we havent even started to reckoning the consequences. From Cambrige Analytica to personal social media bubbles, the possibilities to manage or manipulate the
public have never been greater. But what has not changed is that you need hughe resources to do so, althoug it was never harder to proof that this mangment or manipultation is actually takeing place, in the end its just a tweet from somebody or a post on FB. But sometimes one seem to see it lurking behind the curtain.
lately I’ve been thinking about whether the greater transparency, leaks etc and the speed info can circulate would make it harder for things to go full nazi so to speak, I’m not sure how things got so bad in nazi germany, I think Hitler lying to everyone was a big component, but I don’t know how much info was available to people then.
it’s kind of obvious that the present cabinet are a load of wimps who back down when there’s any kind of reasonable opposition to their ideas.
when the internet was popularised round the mid ’90’s there was that idea that it was going to change things for the better, zoom meetings etc have their pluses, I don’t need to leave the house, I don’t know if it’s possible to say definitively which way it’ll go, or if it’ll go just one way, people are becoming more aware of the way social media apps etc are designed to keep them hooked to their screens, things like climate change and the displacement of people that may cause, resource scarcity etc will also play a role, it’s still up in the air probably, there’s room for greater transparency but also for the spread of misinfo and for people to exploit that
Sadly I think it will become more authoritarian. Facebook and Twitter reinforce peoples’ prejudices by encouraging them to live in their own echo chambers. MSM comes to be regarded as fake news because it doesn’t carry the same extreme message, so it must be lying. Opinions are polarising and there is little respect, sometimes open contempt, for the opponents point of view.
Traditional means of communication are not helping as they too become more extreme. The Conservative Party has moved significantly to the right as it ditches its moderates and recovers popularity among voters who abanded them to support UKIP. Labour has also lost support to UKIP supporters and is split between the hard left and moderates and neither wing sees that compromise must be achieved if they are to replace the Conservatives in government. The hard left appears to prefer being in opposition than working with the moderates. The moderates don’t trust the hard left.
If we rely on direct interraction between people and politicians we are ultimately heading towards mob rule, where the loudest voice wins. My local Tory MP’s Facebook updates are full of very right wing opinions from people who probably regard themselves as moderate. Such populist opinion was traditionally moderated by wiser heads sitting in Parliament. Capital punishment is a very popular opinion among voters but the Commons always votes against motions to bring it back. Now politicians propose populist policies to seek voter approval.
I despair of this situation as there is no sign the movement towards populism is going to stop and swing back away from the authoritariansim which will result.
Just deleted a mini essay in response to your Blog incorporating the Book ‘Sovereign Individual’ (everyone cheers thinking Phew!)
I think more Authoritarian. There is no doubt that Johnsonism has now fully Trumped and the gaslighting by Ministers on Television or the blatent lies being spread is nothing but sinister. It’s not like when l was a bairn that’s for sure.
The best way to sum this up, l feel, is my young daughter thought Nadine Dorries was a bit like the character Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter books when she saw her on the News defending Johnson
That, l think is where we are and “Cyberspace” seems to have been hijacked even more for spreading false and deliberate misinformation to Foster Extremism. But we can counter this by challenging misinformation. Or at least we must try .
Traditional media, book publishers and their distributors are circumscribed by laws of libel, obscenity, sedition, incitement to hate and so on. You could not get an article or a letter into The Times if it offended these laws. The editor would face prosecution.
Online versions of traditional media and their distributors still face these constraints, as no doubt do serious blogs like this one. The likes of Facebook, Twitter and internet service providers like BT do not. This always seems to me to be unreasonable. Is there any way action could be taken against executives of those companies to level the playing field? Or against people (yes, like me!) who hide behind pseudonyms?
Some of the premises are not historically accurate, e.g. written language is not a requirement for complex society – people where taught to remember. Also, newspapers are a feature of the last 200-300 years, before, during and after, pamphleteers were numerous, e.g. Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe as famous examples in the early 18th century in Britain. With this in mind, should we not look at today’s issues differently? Thinks do not happen exactly the same as before but we can (and should) learn from them.
Depends what one means by complexity, of course. You are right that communities can be complex, without written language – as with any other species.
Some of the most fun you can have on the internet is finding articles on how civilisation (let alone democracy) may not survive the internet.
My personal intuition is that as every ideology (including liberalism) takes on ever more religious tones, to replace the hole in western lives left by the death of God*, endless cultural conflict is inevitable. So my money is on increased authoritarianism (including, paradoxically, liberal authoritarianism).
Nietzsche’s famous reference here was to the stabilising influence of faith. Despite tendencies to fight over competing versions.
Now this really is a cracking post.
“The lack of gatekeepers on political discourse has a relationship with the populism-supporting figures such as Johnson and Trump…”
Here’s the rub – the internet by way of a communications platform that then enables social media to play its part in the dissemination of ‘populism’ and fake/real/hybid information is a game that everyone can play – including this blog & us commentators.
Sadly, everyone has the opportunity to do a Johnson or Trump – just think of Starmer and Rayner a year or so taking the bended knee for BLM – it was in itself a stunt, that exemplified tokenism at best – herein lies the challenge.
Social media empowers anyone with a smartphone to communicate their brand of populism at the touch of a button – there is no validation of the what is spoken or printed.
Just look at the ‘news’ about Ukraine in the legacy media – will they /won’t they invade – it’s a crap shoot, no one knows what’s going to happen ,but you wouldn’t know that given the printed inches given over to professionals/amateurs & shysters alike.
With the genie kow out of the t’internet/social media bottle it’s very hard to compute what will happen – the thought of an omnipowerful AI validating every item of data is terrifying but then removing the right of citizens to say/write what they think is also frightening.
If I had to guess what will happen then I’d say that society ( the World) has a global responsibility to self censor & be respective of people’s privacy & cultures. For this level of responsibility ( oh & accountability, that old chestnut) to happen , I’ve a dread that creeping authoritarianism is actually not far around the corner, sadly.
“Sadly, everyone has the opportunity to do a Johnson or Trump – just think of Starmer and Rayner a year or so taking the bended knee for BLM – it was in itself a stunt, that exemplified tokenism at best – herein lies the challenge.”
You making this comparison makes me chuckle at your thinly veiled right-wing white privileged attitude.
Poor Julian Assange is a victim of this new polity. If he had only published through the newspapers like Daniel Ellsberg he would not now be incarcerated in maximum security despite being in reality a whistle blowing journalist. It’s only the misunderstanding of the changed polity that allows this to happen. The UK and US governments are taking advantage of the lack of understanding of the change to do what they like to do – lock up a dangerous critic. The media have not yet grasped that the incarceration of Assange is actually an attack on them through the back door.
With the multiplicity and cost free means of communication there is almost inevitably a corresponding cheapening of the content. Few of our personal text messages to each other over however long a distance would stand much scrutiny in comparison with the monthly, quarterly airmail letter to a cousin in the antipodes.
There is an interesting parallel with the introduction of the last great revolution in communication – the invention of print. Just as today’s internet allows the dissemination of the most outrageous conspiracy theories such as Qanon, the early 16th century experienced an explosion of pamphlets disseminating the most extreme ideas on religious reformation from the mainstream Luther, Zwingli and Calvin to the Anabaptists, Moravians and many more. Pamphleting was cheap and easy and small presses were mobile and difficult to seize and destroy by the authorities. Minds were influenced, Rulers were persuaded, extremists and violence proliferated. The radical anabaptists attempted to establish a communal sectarian government by means of a violent takeover in the German city of Münster in 1534. It ended in siege and bloodshed. Gradually the authorities seized control of “the press”. The UK itself had pretty draconian controls right into the 19th century. The “freedom of the press” has always been state controlled. The government has been happy for the UK’s mainstream print media to be controlled by a small number of right wing media barons. The problem is that Facebook et al are international and focused on making money and have little care and even less responsibility for the conspiracy content they are happy to publish. Longer term, the EU, USA and other responsible states will have to try to control these global giants. People are gullible: whether bare chested wearing bull horns running through the Capital in 2021 or running through Münster with a pitchfork in 1534. Technology and regulation must ultimately make individuals who create and organisations which disseminate liable and accountable for what they publish.
“Longer term, the EU, USA and other responsible states….”
Fascinating that you’re implying that the EU a) is a state* b) that it’s responsible or that it could be responsible for a states communications output.
I would posit that this assertion is worthy a post in its own right. Good on you.
* whilst it has the trappings of a state ,like a flag & anthem and is in itself a legal entity, the EU is no more a state than my old (& very late) grandmother.
Mea culpa. You are right of course, the EU is not a state. However, it is a grouping of states large and powerful enough to collectively regulate global corporations and make them take notice. Facebook et al will simply adopt the divide and conquer approach if single states were to attempt to regulate them individually. China and Russia already heavily censor their citizens’ access to and postings on the internet, as Ms Peng’s case demonstrates.
This was an issue that greatly vexed 17th Century England. The reducing costs of, and improved technology in, movable type gave birth to the broadsheet era. If Swift’s Tale of a Tub (1704) can be said to have a coherent theme at all it is the destructive effect on authority of a proliferation of published opinion (particularly, with characteristic Swiftian irony, given Tale of a Tub was published anonymously, anonymous publications). While it can be fairly said the breadth of dissemination of a broadsheet or pamphlet is nothing to the breadth of the internet we should also remember, in terms of effect, how narrow the franchise was then. Also some of those dubious/false publications had amazingly long lasting consequences. To some extent we still live with the consequences of the 1641 Depositions that contained false accounts of a supposed massacre of protestants in Ulster. To, inexcusably, oversimplify, the reaction to the upheavals of the 17th Century was the ruthless and viscous state censorship that underpinned the seemly and stable Augustan Age. In deciding how to legislate social media, the three lessons from history seem to me to be: (1) comfortable and peaceful times usually come at the price of oppressing freedom; (2) freedom of expression usually ends up with someone getting hurt, and not just their feelings; and (3) whatever we do. future historians will be able to say we got it wrong.
Good points and I agree with your conclusions. And we come to that eternal tension of freedom of expression – the extent of the individual’s right to offend or to be offended – one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Satire and parody – whether in print or on the stage, it seems, has always tried to puncture the most egregious authoritarianism, whether Swift’s “A modest proposal” or the estimable “Private Eye”.
The likes of Trump, DePfeffel and Farage owe most of their “popularity” to legacy media (Print press and TV) than to internet based media.
Trump was always a player in terms of business (his many business failures notwithstanding) but it was US TV that elevated his ego with “The Apprentice”.
DePfeffel’s popularity, such as it is, owes as much to his appearances on HIGNFW and his years as a “journalist” as anything he has done politically (“Boris” is a media facing construct that Johnson created himself).
Farage was in the right place at the right time to become the bogeyman the right wing press used to troll the Conservative party from the right. His many appearances on BBC and other TV channels was way out of proportion to his then political parties election success. Now he’s served his purpose we see and hear a lot less of him.
Where were the gatekeepers of the legacy media when these authoritarian charlatans rose to the prominence they achieved?
Interestingly the ancient Babylonians had moveable type but they only used it to stamp “prayer bricks”.
We know this because very occasionally the symbols are stamped upside down.
We need a body to sort out the fact from the fiction. Perhaps a Ministry of Truth 🤔😂
Given what the Ministry of Truth turned out to be in reality, perhaps we need the opposite: a Ministry of Lies.
The mention of Julian Assange in an earlier comment brings to mind the case of Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan. During Alec Salmond’s trial he revealed facts about Salmond’s accusers which, in the view of the court might easily have led to their being identified. Murray was imprisoned for contempt of court. If I understand correctly one crucial element in his downfall was that he published online, not in print, and for some reason this denied him certain privileges that come with being an accredited member of “the press corps”.
Good post to get thinking going.
A feature of the modern western world is the rise (again) of massive economic and social inequality with a super rich ‘class’ who self interestedly espouse a supposed freedom of expression but which is very much a Randian libertarianism …but on steroids.
It’s guiding principle is that age old ‘golden rule’ which is that those who have the gold make the rules.
The ideals were laid out by William Rees-Mogg in The Sovereign Individual and include the ‘right’ (of the rich) to total privacy (aka secrecy) about their person and money and assets.
He even foresaw the rise of cryptocurrencies and extolled them as a way for the very rich to hide wealth from national governments anywhere and thus be tax free and de facto sovereign states themselves. So far that has not worked out but it will come.
To get this privacy they must ensure the public’s eyes are focused on shiny distractions and manufactured outrage.
To this end they already own and control the content of pretty much the all the MSM (think just how concentrated is the ownership of the UK print and TV media).
But the reach and influence of that ‘traditional’ media as the sole or primary source of information is really is only applicable today to those over 60 and while right now that gets the Tories elected in England, in the important 18 to 36 yr demographic hardly anybody reads a paper or watches the TV news and instead they get their information from a myriad of sources and it’s here that the battle ground for control will be.
Here the super rich are already ahead of the game as they already own most of the internet giants (the pipelines) and I can foresee a time when there is a western version of China’s great internet wall.
It’s instructive to remember that this wall not only keeps out unapproved foreign information but also monitors and polices every word or image within China via those infamous algorithms.
Now I’m not saying that the censorship and control of western version will mean secret police taking you away as they do in China, no more likely will be that what you post simply never arrives and if you get particularly irksome then your own secret peccadilloes (everybody has some) will become public and you will find yourself the story in an unpleasant way.