For a while I’ve been saying that the internet has fundamentally changed the behaviour of society. In the UK, it has led to the arrival of UK, the Greens and in Scotland the massive and unexpected support for the “non-mainstream” party of the SNP.That revolution is still to be felt in the US – where I predicted that a “third party” would enter politics. But from comments about Trump, I’m beginning to wonder weather Trump is that “third party” – and that far from being an “also ran” as UKIP and the greens in the UK, he may actually be in power.

But first, I need to recap and (in some areas) elaborate on how changes in communication technology directly cause political revolutions .

Writing

For obvious reasons as history starts with writing (history is the period for written records) – we don’t know how writing changed society. But we do know society after writing was one in which written knowledge was hugely expensive – usually taking months, of even years to produce just one books – so things like books could only be afforded by the very largest institutions like Church and State. But even so, the transference of knowledge was very slow typically taking decades or even centuries to migrate between countries let alone continents.

Printing

Printing itself was not so much a technological revolution, as an economic revolution making the cost of creating books and thus storing knowledge vastly cheaper than before. As such we start seeing things like books (e.g. Shakespeare) and Newspapers but most importantly of all – we start seeing key books like the Bible being held by (prosperous) individuals and not just Church & State.

And so, as control of knowledge, left the Church/State and went toward prosperous individuals and their associations, we see that power in society followed and from the 16th century onwards we see a series of revolutions in Europe, whereby the once powerful church/state is replaced with power  based on associations of the richer individuals of society.

So, we can attribute the following directly to printing:

• The division of Catholic church and the rise of protestants (who were led by the PRINTED “book” and not the authority of the pope.
• The beheading of Charles I in Britain
• Leading to the French Revolution, etc, etc.

Transcontinental & intra-national Travel
After John Harrison invented the modern world in the form of a watch that could be used for accurate navigation (much to the utter dismay of the Royal Society who hated the idea that a watchmaker was far better than them),  … and after the evolution of coal powered transport (much to the dismay of the Royal Society today) … personal mobility vastly increased.

Penny post – Telegraph & Photography,

Arguably, the great revolution in person-to-person communication occurred with the introduction of mail. Such communication had always been possible for the biggest organisations like State and Church who would send out messengers. But obviously this was hugely expensive and only the very largest organisations could afford it.

But a postal system completely changed the “social geography”, providing to ordinary individuals the ability to communicate across a realm if not a world.

This allowed social structures to extend beyond the areas where individuals could travel. So, e.g. a family member in London could keep in contact with someone in Bath. But in addition, it allowed organisations to exist beyond the area where individuals could easily meet together. This was extended by the telegraph and photography then made it possible to not only read about what was happening in far off places, but also to see what had happened.

The effect of this new communication media was to vastly increase individual’s “social geography”, so that people might know as much about what was happening in Africa or America (from personal correspondence) as they knew about what was happening in the next village. It is not surprising that the period of largest emigration from Scotland started in the 1850s, 10 years after the introduction of the uniform “penny post” in Britain. But it is arguable whether the mail and the extension of people’s “social landscape” beyond their immediate “village” encouraged this emigration or whether emigration encouraged better postal communication.

Publishing, Newspapers,

The other related major revolution that occurred around the Victorian age was that newspaper publishing dropped in price until it could be afforded by a majority. It also meant that publishing was now so cheap that books could be produced by any reasonable sized organisation. So, e.g. in the Victorian age we saw the development of many new churches – each publishing their own views on religion. Likewise, we see large publishers starting to churn out books for the masses and newspapers appearing daily for the masses. So, information and news, whilst still controlled by large organisations, to a much greater extent became “democratised”.

Like mail, newspapers and books increased individual’s access to information from afar, but unlike mail, which was person-to-person, newspapers were controlled by a publishing elite.

So, in one way it helped change society from one controlled by the old “political elite” so that individuals at all levels of society expected to be part of the public debate, but the flip side of the coin, was that those who now controlled newspapers and book publishing became a new political and social elite (i.e. the press barons).

On the one hand, never before had people had so much aspiration to be part of the political debate, but not since the power of the Church before printing, had so few individuals in the form of the print barons had so much control over what people read, and through that what people thought and believed.

TV Broadcasting

However, the power of the newspaper magnets starting being challenged by TV around 1950. For obvious reasons, in most countries, the political ruling elites attempted to take control of this broadcasting media (with varying degrees of success).

So, e.g in Britain, the “BBC” became the mouthpiece of the political class in Westminster … supposedly impartial … but as we sceptics know, that is a complete lie, because that impartiality only applies to coverage within the political class itself … whereas if its a viewpoint of the political class foisted at the rest of us, you can be libelled, denied a hearing, lied about, all with impunity.

The other massive impact of TV, was to tend to converge the culture and language of regions.

Telephone

Like mail, the telephone was largely a person-to-person revolution. Although this merely replaced post and to some extent the telegram, it did bring down the cost of having person-to-person communications over long distances. But the cost was still high for international communications and e.g. in the 1960s, one would have to book a call from Britain to Australia and that call might not take place or be delayed if the lines were needed for “more important” people.

And again, it is interesting that the peak of Scottish emigration occurred in the 1960s & 70s just when telephones became a started appliance in many homes.
International flights
Perhaps the greatest revolution in communications occurred when international travel became cheap enough for many ordinary individuals to travel not only from one country to another, but between continents. And where people go … they take their ideas and beliefs.

Internet –  early expansion and  academic control

The internet started in Academia and the military/government. So, for obvious reasons it started being used heavily by academia. The initial impact of this revolution was to start vastly increasing the opportunity for international co-operation.

Whilst undoubtedly beneficial in some respects, in others it has had appalling consequences. Because the effect of much improved national and international communications was to change the allegiance of many academics from being one primarily focussed on their own University and “their colleagues” were their fellow University professors – so that those in the same subject other institutions might be seen as “the opposition” …  to one where academics might communicate daily through email and many times a year through conferences, with their colleagues internationally and their primary allegiance was to their subject colleagues and not their own University.

The unfortunate result is that in some less robust subjects we start seeing the emergence of  massive subject “group think” … subjects started operating as global autonomous entities, setting their own standards, creating their own cultures, and e.g. in the case of climate, manufacturing their own belief systems that are largely impervious to others.

Internet – commercialisation and the “dot.com” boom
The next phase of the internet, was one where larger companies saw it as an opportunity to make money. So, various large companies such as the BBC, newspapers publishers and retailers, attempted to find a way to use the internet to make money for themselves. However, whilst some made huge fortunes, the overall effect of the internet has been to reduce the cost of communication and to allow customers far more choice. This has meant far more competition particularly in publishing not only within countries where there was already some competition, but now internationally far beyond the previous geographical reach of people and organisations.
Thus, the effect on many organisations was not to increase profits – but instead to put many large publishers in direct competition not only with each other – but also with a growing number of free-to-read “bloggers”.
Newspapers have had to adapt by massively cutting costs. This has largely led to a “copy and paste” mentality to publishing where many journalists are now little more than content editors regurgitating content from others.
This not only massively hit profits of those like newspaper publishers, but it also massively hit their political clout. So, e.g. in the UK, where once the Sun Newspaper proclaimed about one general election that it was “the Sun Wot won it” … in 2006 the Government started the hitherto unthinkable act of a (limited) prosecuting over phone hacking of the News of the World (part of the Sun empire). But as power of the press barons waned eventually saw in 2011, the politicians had the courage to take on even the big wigs at the Sun.
So, papers like the Sun are no longer “King makers”. Now, much of what they print is provided by others and what they do say carries much less weight with the public.
Internet – large-scale adoption & social media

In contrast to the established broadcasting and publishing elites that used to dictate social and political views in their heyday, the humble person used to be pretty powerless to do anything but grumble – unless they too formed massive political organisations like Unions – which almost invariably ended up being controlled for a few for the benefit of that few. That is, until the internet. Then suddenly anyone with a PC, could start publishing to the internet for less than the price of a book.

But perhaps more importantly, social media now enables individuals to “publish” their own views, without really even thinking about it in the sense of “Publishing”.

To give an example I search for the random phrase: “Alabama Housewife Ferret” – and I found this page from Iva McGraw. From this I learn that she is obsessed with something called “Cookie Jam”. How does Iva McGraw’s posting on “Cookie Jam” change the world? It’s not even about politics.

Well, that is the point. Most of what concerns most ordinary people does not count as “politics”. Instead “politics” is a way describe the kinds of views about the world we hear from the political elites in journalism and “politics”.

But, like every we write it is a comment on society and that is an expression of our politics – even if it is to say that “what I heard called ‘politics’ is of little relevance to me”.

However, even a simple page like that contains social messages. Like many, there are (presumably) pictures of family, the pictures she chooses presumably are those that project her as a person in the best light so, they show the fashion she likes. Individually it is just one person’s view. Collectively, it is a huge social voice – and what it most loudly says is “What I value is not the things I hear politicians talking about”.

Fashion is a great example of something that hitherto was controlled and largely manipulated by big business (I worked in a textile company and was told the colours that would be “in fashion”, not this year, not the next, but the one after (I think it was black!) So, the fashion industry through manipulating the articles people read (and getting celebrities to wear the appropriate colours) would manipulate women into changing their wardrobes not only yearly, but in many cases monthly.

And women have not stopped changing clothes – it’s just that now what they believe is in fashion is as much influenced by what they see other ordinary people wearing on social media as it is by what the fashion industries tries to force people to think is fashionable.

And likewise in numerous other areas. If something I buy breaks down, I need only go onto the internet to find other people with the same thing. From them I can either find out how to fix it or … just as easily I can find out whether it really is the manufacturer who is to blame. Thus where formerly the individual was largely at the mercy of large manufacturers who could state black was white and claim it was a unique problem that must be caused by that one customer, nowadays, individuals can not only find whether they are alone, but they can very easily form ad hoc social alliances that can easily take on the power of all manufacturers.

Trump

I have long predicted that this change in power from large organisations (Universities, Political parties, Broadcasters, Newspaper Barons) to the individual would have profound impacts on our politics. We saw the first inkling of this in the rise of both the Greens and UKIP in British elections. In other words, the newspapers could no longer kid everyone that “there was no choice but to vote for the same old tired political elite who have stitched us all up by stupid things like joining Europe and global warming obsessions“.
So, I was interested to read this comment from Dudley Horscroft