Friday 29 December 2000

Pic of the day: The Internet revolution. No more talking to family members - we just read each other's online diary!

Revolutions then and now

I keep hearing about the "Internet revolution" and such. This makes me think about the Russian revolution and the French revolution, and I must admit that it is hard to see the common theme.

These revolutions were supposed to bring in an era of freedom and equality, but they quickly turned into bloodshed, war for power and a reign of terror. The ideas they stood for did bring some change, but to a large extent it was just new people taking over old bastions. As usual it was the poor who suffered - when the elephants fight, the grass is flattened.

In contrast to this, several dictatorships or similar dubious government have been ousted during the last decade or so, mainly in Eastern Europe but also in developing countries. By and large, this has happened with a minimum of violence, and then mainly from the old guard desperate to retain its power. There have not been years of random executions and civil war. I think we can tentatively say that the age of revolutions is past, and thank the Light for that!

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The Internet revolution is more like the Industrial revolution. I guess it is acceptable to use the same word for so different things - after all, "revolution" must come from the verb "revolve", to turn around. And the Industrial revolution did turn upside down a lot of things. Even so, at least in the short run the poor still ended up at the bottom. I wonder if this is happening again now? I fear it is.

I'm not rich myself, barely middle class, yet I can generally afford to use the Internet as much as I feel I need. But then again, this is Norway. One of the richest countries in the world, and one of the most egalitarian. (Without bloody revolutions, if you must know.) If we look to the truly poor - the farmers and workers in developing countries, the jobless inner city dwellers of the USA - Internet is probably not very high on their list of important things. Food and decent clothes, clean water, learning to read and write ...

So, will Internet bring a real revolution, a turning over of the pyramids of power? Will it bring brotherhood and equality to all? Will it give power to the people, and give the workers ownership of the means of production?

Perhaps it will. I have read that in companies where e-mail is used extensively, women and non-whites have a greater impact. It is easier to notice and accept their ideas when presented through a medium that does not sort people by sex and color. Or age, for that matter: In the world of Internet, the young are the masters. The middle aged, clinging to their positions and resisting change, are the losers. And more and more, the real capital of the company is in the brain of the employees. You can't get a better ownership of the means of production than taking them with you when you go home every day.

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There have been several of these "revolutions" in the history of humankind. The oldest ones are lost in the mist of prehistory. Being able to control and even make fire must have changed life enormously, but we really don't know how life was before this event. All human tribes today are descended from a common ancestor much later. The same goes for spoken language.

The first "revolution" that is part of history, sort of, is the neolithic revolution or the ascent of agriculture. In several different parts of the world, people started to cultivate various plants, most of all grasses. They tamed animals for food and for work. They started to build centers of habitation, permanent villages and cities. In this case, there are still tribes that do not follow this pattern, so we know a bit about how deeply it changed our ancestors' lives. Basic symbols of thought, such as our religious myths, are drastically different from those of the hunter-gatherer societies. Minor population groups expanded rapidly to make up a large part of the world's populace. (By and large, neighboring tribes did not adopt the practice of agriculture. With some exceptions, they continued as hunterer and gatherers and then died out. There was some interbreeding, but not all that much.)

Writing is another "revolution" that changed societies. It became possible to have nations and empires, with the bureaucracy and administration they required, and with state religions. It is hard to say, however, how much of this empire building was due to writing and how much was due to the new metal weapons and tools that also changed life. Bronze was always expensive and not stunningly better than stone tools. But iron really changed us, giving us literally an edge against nature as well as enemies.

With the printing press and subsequent basic education, practically everyone became literate. After the newspaper, radio and then television invaded almost every home. While these were "one to many" media, the telephone was "one to one", and also became so common that we assume people to have one unless told otherwise. None of this is the case for the Internet, nor can we expect that to happen for years at best. If ever.

I am not sure the Internet will change our lives the way the automobile did. Perhaps more indirectly, the way the railroad affected even those who did not use it: By lowering prices of goods and by increasing the exchange of ideas. It could be that it will stop there, and never fully penetrate society the way the telephone or the postal system did.

Then again, perhaps in a few years everybody will be connected to the Net all the time, through their Datapad or their wristwatch or their mobile phone ... those who live will see. But hopefully it will all happen without bloodshed and without cruel dictatorships.