Mobility and social change

The politic-economical history of our part of the world can then be summarized (and simplified) as (1) nomadic tribal life, (2) agricultural civilizations (including the Celts, Greeks, Romans, and other "classic" civilizations, and the feudal system of the Dark and Middle Ages), (3) industrial civilization, and (4) the information age.

In an earlier draft of this entry, I argued that what we now call the information age is not essentially different from previous history, because discoveries were already at the root of many historic events, including the change from each of the three phases mentioned. But then I realized that the information age does distinguish itself in one important aspect, namely the intended audience of information. In the past, although the most important ideas (making fire and weapons, the wheel, spoken language and writing, etc. etc.), probably spread like wildfire, they were not meant for everyone. Certainly within organized civilizations, information was guarded carefully within the various upper and middle classes (rulers, administrators, soldiers, priests, merchants and artisans).

The first clear example of a break in this tradition that I can think of (I am sure there are others) are the translations of the Bible into German, English, etc., thereby making it accessible to the common man. This was of course instrumental in the rise of the Protestants, and the fall of the Catholic Church. And over the course of the industrial age, the level of schooling for the middle and lower classes rose bit by bit, until we now have a situation where there is a certain degree of upward mobility. And I just saw the culmination of a very recent one, namely a proposal to give all U.K. citizens access to their own medical data, via Internet. You could in fact summarize recent socio-political developments as an upgrading of the lower classes (abolishment of slavery, voting rights for all in most countries), and a downgrading the upper ones (either in terms of power - royalty that is just there for show - or in terms of the amount of respect they command), and both are in my view very closely linked to increased access of information for the masses.

So why did I call this entry "mobility and change" (and not "information and change")? Because the exchange (or "mobility", if you will) of information is only one important driving force behind social change. An other, possibly equally important one is physical mobility. In the beginning, individual humans were limited to the distance they could walk. Then, they learned to ride a horse. Then came the wheeled transport (carts, trains, cars) and aerial transport (balloons, the airplane, etc). Each development increased the rate of change. And here again we see a similar trend as with information, with mass transport coming into its own in the last hundred years or so, starting (in some countries at least) with trains, and followed by cars and now cheap air travel. And this has had a profound effect on society. Language barriers have restricted mobility somewhat, but even that is becoming less and less of an issue. In the end, this mobility, and the ever-more global economy (or mobility of goods), will almost certainly contribute to the "harmonization" or "levelling" of cultures and the loss of certain aspects thereof, and of languages. This may not be such a bad thing as some make it out to be, but it does give pause, I hope.

One might be tempted to conclude that we have reverted to the hunter-gatherer stage. But there is an important difference: nowadays, families might move (and in some cases only one member the family), but not whole tribes. And the cost of this refound freedom is loss of social cohesion for society at large and rootlessness for the individual. Personally, I have moved house 15 times, and have never lived in the same house for more than 7 years in row, and though this has been an advantage in terms of language skills and the scope of my outlook on life, I do miss having long-term relationships that most people take for granted.