Future History of Information Networks?
A simple trick I often use to clarify my thoughts is to imagine what will history books say about the thing I’m working on. History has the benefit of hindsight when writing about things.
What will history books tell about us, the people of Information Networks? What would historians underline and emphasise? Perhaps something that we can’t see at the moment?
Before trying to answer that, some background for my thinking.
Last weekend I visited Artipelag in Stockholm and its Bloomsbury Spirit exhibition. Bloomsbury Group was a community of people in early 1900s who were hugely influential in British art, economics and literature. Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell and John Maynard Keynes were in the core of the group among other big names.
I’m a huge fan of the modern world in the turn of the 19th/20th century. People then lived in a very similar societal turmoil as we do: technological changes disrupting existing businesses and power structures, new media channels resonating with new political groups, and a general hubris of “we as a humanity have never before been so advanced, so smart and so modern!”. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Well, history tends to repeat itself.
However, there is more to the Bloomsbury Group from the perspective of Information Networks. And it became clear to me in the Artipelag exhibition.
Here’s an edited version of one of the exhibition texts about the Bloomsbury Group. In boldface are the words I changed (in parentheses the original). With minimal edits, I turned it into something that perhaps historians might write about us:
In Europe’s major cities all types of entrepreneurs, students, designers and hipsters (artists) met at cafes and bars. The desire for new ideas was as great as the desire to solve big societal problems (as the problem of overcrowding). Improvised cafe encounters were modernism’s counterpart to the closed boardrooms (saloons) of previous centuries.
For the Information Networks (Bloomsbury Group) conversation was the most important component of them all. For them, dialogue, friendship, the quest for truth and creation were the purpose and meaning of life.
Information Networks began to meet in 1999 (1905) and continued throughout their lives; in their everyday lives, at cafes, parties and exhibitions, in books, newspapers and other publications. Their persistent conversations about gender, art, economics, history, science, philosophy, mathematics and the art of living distinguish them from other more specialised design, business & tech (modernist) networks.
It was about coming together, giving and taking in arguments and always seeking the truth and “the good”. Conversations also entailed listening. Information Networks opposed fundamentalism and heroism. Therefore, they became (and are) inconvenient for conformists. They present a challenge not only because they championed dialogue in times of totalitarianism and the persecution of dissidents but because they took the French Revolution’s ideas of freedom, equality and solidarity seriously.
I whole-heartedly recommend having a look at the people, values, and works of the Bloomsbury Group. Especially Virginia Woolf’s book “A Room of One’s Own” is a brilliant, fun, and timeless text on how the world was/is dominated by men. For us men, it is a great eye-opener to the visible and invisible structures that suppress women in society.
With the “Athene / Info 20 years” celebrations starting next year, what would you write in the history books about the next 20 years? What will the history of Information Networks look like in 2039?
