Things are at a standstill. The only thing that spreads is information and the virus. It flows across the lockdowns, between the frosty cities of the north and into the southern hemisphere where the last days of summer close Australian beaches. Even the disease can’t match it in speed and the way it evolves. It reaches corners of the world faster and faster, leading to more and more of us being aware at any given moment of things that were once invisible.
We compartmentalize it, we say we understand it or we simply reject it. It is the same process, the old argument goes, that has been happening for the past century. There were the telegraph, radio and television. There were phone lines. There were letters.
I remember the day my father got behind a computer for the first time. It was an old machine, sent over via the smuggling route on the back of a cargo truck all the way from the UK. My enterprising aunt felt it was the time to send us a PC, for it was a hot commodity back then. Money was good for her in the 2000s — it was the first time in her life she had any, I believe. She was cleaning houses for some British lord back then. As a consequence, on our kitchen table was a Pentium III. The resident neighbourhood computer guy had connected all the cables and there we were in the evening, alone again, marvelling at the device.
My father’s finger was circling high above the keyboard, then suddenly he would locate the letter he needed and slam it down against the keyboard. Stern-faced, very concentrated and trying to stay in control, he faced off against the monitor flickering back at him. One of the rare memories I have from that time.
It all seemed marvellous back then. Even the princes of Nigeria had their charm when you’d find them in the inbox. The real-time communication between thousands of people somehow became common and boring. There were plenty of shows on the TV dealing with the topic. Serious-looking reporters talking about the Internet revolution without actually understanding what it was. They had been aware something big was on the horizon, but they could not have perceived what it was. Change is hard to grasp unless you are a part of it. From the outside it looks like a big storm coming, but the noise is too loud and the visibility too low. The unsure circling of the finger was slow and prohibitively high above the keyboard to allow you to actually hit the letter.
The vibrations we all feel as the empires shake add to the feeling. Especially now, when the change seems to have accelerated so much that it led to the steps of the American Capitol.
My interest is in how the new information spread influences our own Empire. Why is the status quo so challenged these days, if there ever was a status quo?
My premise is that the evolution in information spread is bringing about the changes we have been observing in the past years. The rise of populism, the increased political pressures, the wealth gap. There is a lot of uncertainty and a lack of optimism. The issues revolve mainly around negatives, and that is in a time when society is the most prosperous it has ever been.
The Empire starts falling at that point when people start losing faith in it. Once people lose the faith in the dream, it’s just a matter of time until the end comes.
As a person with his hand close to the keyboard, it seems to me that certain things are overlooked. I am sure I am overlooking many more myself, but some things I can’t fail to note. We use the matrices of the past to look at the future. The talk of class war, of income inequality gap, of imperialist tendencies.
These old matrices are not well suited to the current situation because they do not incorporate the speed of information. They focus on “us” vs “them”, where the enemy is something known.
In the good old days, the enemy was a man with a cylindrical hat. The enemy was a man of different skin color. The enemy was that guy in the village who wore glasses.
The enemy of today is a ghost, because he escapes description. He is the deep state, the vaccines, the Russian threat.
He is a thousand things and yet he is nothing.
Does such an enemy appear because consensus does not exist anymore? The speed of information prevents compromise building by promoting one narrative. The velocity is unrelenting and the constant pings of notifications leave no time for contemplation. Equilibrium needs time, and a willingness of the other party to negotiate. When you move too fast, and always believe you are right, there is no way to stop and actually see what is going on around you. If there are too many channels you can express yourself on, the messages become ever more polarizing and they represent less and less of the population. A good analogy would be village pubs vs city nightlife. Village pubs are not going to be the best party you had in your life, but they will be a place where you can meet a good cross-section of the village population. The city offers more opportunities for fun and hanging out with like-minded people, but while you are sipping on a glass of milk in that goth bar next to Warsauer Str. railway station, you are not really mingling with the general population.
In the 80s and 90s you might have five newspapers and three TV channels. They would have sent one controlled message, with some nuances here and there.
A Ron Burgundy clone would tell you each evening at the same time how things are going. There would be some flashy animation, and a few more details in the morning newspapers. Then you would go to your office or your factory and argue production quotas with some Sergey or check with some Pam why the water-cooler is broken.
Nowadays it seems like the brakes of the information flow are relaxed and that anyone is allowed to define his own reality. The masses are having to judge right from wrong, where governments are providing a picture that is neither correct nor representative of societal changes.
More and more are becoming angry and confused. The internet amplifies their voices and echo chambers are created. There is simply too much information to process. We in turn become dismissive of others in real-life situations and stop valuing difference. We search for our lookalikes, the people we believe are exactly like us, without settling and understanding that the acceptance of difference is what matters. We don’t talk but repeat our internet echo chambers.
Radical thoughts become a reason to fire someone. If you are not with me, you are against me. Nobody is given the grace or opportunity to catch up, and everyone forgets how yesterday they all tolerated the wrong way without questioning it. It’s my way or the highway, and groups become even more puritan with time.
What does this mean for the Empires of today, and what changes will they have to endure? The 90s and 2000s were spent in a victorious celebration, after the Cold War victory.
Fukuyama announced the end of history in the mid-90s, and it seemed the systems that were established after WWII were here to stay.
In a speech the other day, Biden said that democracy is in crisis. For me, democracy means freedom of expression, and that is something that doesn’t seem to be there anymore.
If you label 90% of others as “wrong” and refuse to talk to them it doesn’t end well. It’s like we are setting the stage for a conflict.
On the other side, my hope is that the amount of innovation that is happening due to information spread will manage to stem the tide of hatred. The decentralization of the internet, the movement calling for a replacement of tech giants with something sustainable and the ever-increasing speed of innovation might be enough to stop the tide. Governments are still too slow on the uptake, but by looking at the examples of digital states like Estonia, that might also change.
Oh, and the explosion of memes.
