Something big is happening. We have moved from a mechanical world based on manufacturing usually within national boundaries to a global economy based on the creation and distribution of knowledge.
This change has been accompanied by an extraordinary technological revolution.
The computer, the tablet and the smart phone, all of these are now available at relatively affordable prices and put access to knowledge and communication in the hands of tens of millions of people.
The growth of horizontal communications and networks in the place of hierarchical structures and vertical command systems is a remarkable change in the way human beings can interact.
In The Bridge, a Compass pamphlet co written by Neal Lawson and Uffe Elbaek, fascinating ideas about transformation in the political landscape are discussed.
A vertical society is being transformed into horizontal communities with dramatic effects on our political structures, the authors argue.
They throw down a challenge to traditional parties that need to respond to the changing world they describe.
As deputy chair of the Labour Party, I wholly agree that our party cannot be a 20th century top-down relic in an increasingly flat world. And I don’t believe that it is such.
We are increasingly talking of ourselves as wider movement rather than an old-fashioned vertical party. See, for example, Ed Miliband’s speech at the March 1 special conference.
However, it would be a mistake to believe that a change of technology, from machines to computers, on its own will bring an end to a world dominated by the billionaires to be replaced by one which is under the control of the billions.
And there is a danger that the authors fall into a utopian vision of the power of the World Wide Web on its own to transform human relationships. It’s kind of technological determinism.
For instance, they say that: “Humankind is going through one of its rare but profound paradigm shifts.”
I don’t agree. A paradigm shift does occur not when the global corporations put new technology into the hands of the masses. It occurs when the masses suddenly see that they can use the technology to put an end to an unfair and unjust set of arrangements which prevail in the world.
For example, when Guthenberg invented the printing press, the consequence was to put books within the reach of the people who previously had not had access to most cultural artefacts.
But that did not amount to a paradigm shift. Nor did a shift happen when those presses were then used to print Bibles in English, making them accessible to ordinary people.
Suddenly, thousands of people were able to read the Bible for the first time without mediation by the hierarchy of priests resting on papal infallibility. Even then, a paradigm shift did not take place.
It was only when new interpretations of the Bible’s central message – made possible by the invention of the press – were popularised that these new readings led to changes in the way in which many people interpreted the world around them.
To be fair to the authors, they accept the need “for struggle. The big corporations will try to commercialise these flat planes. The state will push surveillance.”
You can say that again. The internet is penetrated from top to bottom by commercial interests. You can’t go on Facebook or Twitter without being bombarded by targeted adverts. Google maintain absolutely vast tracts of information about everyone of us.
And the state? We now know how much we are all watched over by the National Security Agency and GCHQ.
Of course, the Arab Spring rebels used the smart phone and Twitter to mobilise a movement against tyranny. But then the tyrant can simply switch off the internet.
The truth is that, like any piece of technology, the internet can change the way we live our lives. And it is remarkable how fast these changes are taking place. But it is equally a machine to mount a surveillance on our lives, rip us off and oppress us all, as it is an instrument of human liberation.
This technology is a necessary but not sufficient condition to build the good society. In the end, liberation will only come when a new paradigm shift, in the sense of a new way of seeing the world, emerges, and people come together to act in new ways. The internet, the smart phone, Twitter, Wikipedia and even Google will then be tools at our disposal.