Evolution of a Revolution: Information as the Ultimate Liberator

The most overused term of our time has to be empowerment. Yet, as much as I have grown weary of it, it is an accurate word for what I am about to describe. This treatise will venture to illustrate how the availability of information has done more to advance human empowerment than any other event or institution in human history. Technology has played a center role in this and has continued to do so throughout the process. I pause to point out that for anything to become a possibility for survival in civilization it must meet three criteria:

1. It must be socially acceptable
2. It must be technologically feasible
3. It must be economically feasible

There are no exceptions to this rule. All three components must be present or it will be doomed to failure. This is also why time tested institutions also become extinct; they no longer have all of these ingredients.

The Primary Actors

It is often argued who is the most influential man of all history. I would have to say that above all others it is Gutenberg. He was the true father of mass media as we know it. By inventing the printing press he did several things which I doubt if he ever considered as outcomes. Firstly, he made the printed word much more available. This immediately made information something that was accessible to many more people. In those days the only ones learned enough to read was the clergy and a few from the aristocracy. This began to make it possible for more to be literate. This, of course, was met with resistance by the clergy because it was the beginning of diluting their importance. After all, it was then no longer a monopoly on interpretation of the Bible. The public no longer needed to get the interpretation from the Vatican as more could do it themselves and could put their own bias on its meaning.
Next came the Bible being translated into the contemporary languages so that anyone – even those who could not read the classical tongues – could read the Bible. This again was met by the clergy with even more vehemence and the claim that it was sinful to re-interpret the holy scriptures as the common man was unequipped with the wisdom to understand it. This was the beginning of the end for the Vatican’s authoritarianism. This led to the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation.
The path I direct the reader to see is that this change was initially and ultimately due to the origins of the free flow of information and accessibility to it by more and more people. This pattern continued unabated and along its route followed more revolutions.
The next great leap in this process came in the Twentieth Century when radio and television exploded upon the scene and exponentially expanded the availability of information to the masses. This utilitarianism of information was quickly recognized by all the governments of the world, in especially the fascist and communist ones who quite deftly twisted the slant of the news and used the mass media as a conduit for its distribution to the public. Fascism and communism eventually imploded (the former by opposing military forces and the latter by the weakness of its own economic theories). But as for communism, I will draw a point from a conversation I held about a generation ago with a Polish émigré whom, when asked by me, how much longer he felt that communism would prevail. His answer was, “In this day and age you can’t keep people ignorant any longer”.
This was very prophetic as only a few years later the underpinnings of communism folded up because it was by then given a helping push by Ronald Reagan when he bankrupted them in his arms buildup. But just as importantly its end was hastened by the fact that those behind the Iron Curtain knew what life was like on the other side of the fence and they too wanted its benefits. And as any of us who was alive at that time recalls, each of the governments simply let it happen (with the only exception being Romania) because they knew the game was over forever and no amount of force could stop it.
At this juncture I digress to recognize the contribution of Marshall MacLuhan who predicted (ca. 1960) that, “In the future the greatest tool for promoting revolution will not be the gun but television”. What more accurate prediction can we find in history? I know of none.
Let us move forward to the 1960s and the youth movement of that time. This was a time when self expression, self aggrandizement, and selfishness in general were the flavors of the day and indeed, the overriding rule of the day. It was the culmination of many movements including but by no means limited to women’s liberation, consumerism, civil rights, environmentalism, gay liberation, free speech, free love, and anything which infringed or suggested limiting these “rights”. Many institutions and fads sprung into existence which legitimized the “celebration of the self” and quickly became household words. A short list of these would be E.S.T., T.M., Rolfing, and a host of religions and quasi religions arose as well to give those who needed a feeling of belonging to a religion a place to go. All had one thing in common which was that they were celebrations of throwing away the shackles of societal control over behavior which had stood the test of time for several millennia. The second thing these had in common was that they became widely popular because the mass media gave them coverage and were presented with a slant intended to increase their popularity.
Part of this trend was two visionaries who never saw themselves as such but nonetheless were progenitors of another revolution every bit as profound as Gutenberg’s. I speak of Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs who were two hippies who were the archetypical “computer nerds” who had an idea of creating a machine which would bring information freely and independently of any government or corporation to anyone who was interested in seeking it. They invented the first practical personal computer (specifically the first Apple) which they promoted to schools. It didn’t take long for it to gain popularity as schools began to place orders. As the computer was improved its applications were quickly apparent to business and government and eventually the consumer. This in turn led to the revolution of the Internet which no one, not even Wosniak and Jobs, could have foreseen.
Just as Gutenberg could not have predicted how his invention would have changed the world, neither did Jobs or Wosniak. At this time the full potential of the information age which they largely brought about has not been realized. Nor can we ever expect to predict the full potential of the empowerment which it will lead to. We can, however, attempt to speculate and extrapolate as to where it may lead. I hasten to add that it may just be a matter of allowing us to use our collective imaginations.

Will There Be Complete Empowerment One Day?

The idea of Jobs and Wosniak was born out of a typically 1960s philosophy and mindset that basically information should be freely accessible to all without restriction. This has had further unintended consequences all of which orbit around the principle of independence. We are approaching a time when because of the Internet more and more children can and are being home schooled, more and more people are treating their own illnesses because they can get help and guidance from the Internet, more and more people can work for themselves and can negotiate their own contracts which has led to the decreased importance of holding down a 9 to 5 job in the public or private sector, this, in turn has led to the marginalization of unions because we don’t need them to negotiate a contract for us. This list is nearly endless and with every passing day new applications and benefits are being found and employed by the general public. The operative word for all this is that the freedom and availability of information for the masses is nearly universal and as such personal independence is at an all time high and continues to grow.
It is indeed foreseeable that no amount of resistance from the established order will prevent us from eventually minimalize the need for government to do so much for us, we will not need retirement plans to be provided by industry and government as we will all be able to devise our own with guidance by advisors we can find on the Internet. The same will be found as far as health plans are concerned. As soon as we begin working we will have the option to begin an account for our eventual medical care (these are some of the hottest investments today).
So as these institutions become more and more antiquated we can foresee the advancement of personal liberty and selfishness to new high points, but it will be in reality, a new and revolutionary approach and vision. It will hail in a new era of personal responsibility because anyone who wishes to benefit from these new realities they will have to do it themselves because “Big Brother” in the form of government and/or big business, who historically were seen as the “go-to guys” who provided us with cradle to grave caretaking, will no longer be there. It will truly become a society of survival of the fittest with the fittest being those invested with the information and the practical understanding of how to use it that will place them at the top of the societal “food chain”.
I have said a lot and have peered into the future on many levels, but I do not think I have gone out on a limb with any of them. As I did say earlier, this is largely a matter of using our imaginations as to where we will be led. Indeed, the history of man’s advancement of making information more accessible has from the beginning expanded geometrically. At each technological leap forward no one was able to project where it would lead. It is because technological advancements tend to be breakthrough in nature, their potentialities are difficult to forecast because once initiated their progress takes on the characteristics of a runaway train and their applications expand outward in all directions geometrically.
While the technology will continue to evolve in ever increasing rapidity, another component which is just as important is that once man is in possession of such power and control then it becomes an intoxicant. So bear in mind the caution that with today’s amazing science and technology, if we add the intoxication we all get from holding such power, the “thing” itself can take on a life of its own and may end up controlling us.
The final point I will make is if we look at Karl Marx, who was long considered the great revolutionary, he is already a miniscule dwarf when it comes to the true revolutions and what has been the path to true empowerment. Totally contrary to his idea that equity can only be granted and controlled by a central power, we are seeing that equity and empowerment will come through a decentralization and reliance on the self. Furthermore, it will not be because a grand and indifferent obtusive power deems to grant the masses any power, it will be because individuals have armed themselves with the power of knowledge and information that will lead to final liberation.