Modern Communications vs. Centralized Power
[This essay appeared in the Syracuse (NY) Record newspaper, April 13, 1992, p. 9.]
On the “MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour,” noted scholar George Kennan was asked why the power of the people on the streets erupted in Moscow. The first reason he cited was “the communications revolution.”
Kennan’s response represents wisdom on a deeper level than is first evident. He did not say “mass media’; he said, “the communications revolution.” This term goes way beyond CNN broadcasts; it is more inclusive and it addresses deep and significant communication dynamics. Commentators are already noting that telephones, fax machines, Xeroxed newsletters and Gorbachev’s shortwave BBC broadcasts were the communications tools that chipped away at the structure of the former Soviet Union.
We need to reflect further on the stunning changes under way in communication patterns and technologies. These changes are empowering people in the Commonwealth of Independent States. These same dynamics are revolutionizing global economies and challenging the credibility of authority structures in corporate, public service, and ecclesial organizations.
When large numbers of people are nodes in a communications network, using telephones, computers and fax machines, the messages cannot be controlled. This communication pattern empowers groups; authority, whether legitimate or not, seems to move from “the top” to “the grass roots.”
Pyramid organizational and authority structures are under siege (in Moscow, in Rome) to a large degree because people communicate easily in new and interactive ways. The telephone is one of the most significant interactive tools in this revolutionary arsenal. Technology and politics and economics are now becoming integrated in bold ways to provide multiple electronic highways over which these interactive and powerful messages travel.
I recently spent five months in Europe and viewed the Gulf War through the eyes of the BBC’s World Service. This gives an American a rich perspective on world events. Just as significant, however, was the time spent talking with telecommunications ministers in all 12 European Union nations. These EU governments, along with the corporate sector, are collaborating to build the communications infrastructure that will be the foundation of the EU economy.
European Union staffers at its Brussels headquarters estimate that 12 percent of the gross national product of the EU will be in the telecommunications market and that 61 percent of their workforce will be information-sector workers. By the end of this decade, global communications will represent annual revenues of $750 billion.
Communication highways are the equivalent of roads, railroads and canals that provided the economic infrastructure of the industrial era. Over these highways will travel what is termed broadband communications—personal messages on cellular phones, and data of all kinds—from financial information, to video programming and shopping services.
This changing communications scene explains why AT&T could afford to divest itself of its Bell operating companies; it is now poised to compete as a major player in this global communications marketplace. The regional Bells are also forming joint ventures throughout Europe, linking America’s communication technology to nations with relatively untapped new markets for broadband communication services.
The fact that a telecommunications infrastructure is the key to economic development is not lost on emerging nations of central and Eastern Europe. I spoke with the deputy minister in Prague and he shared with me that nation’s broadband communications strategic planning document. Essential to the emerging nations of the Soviet bloc will be telecommunications links similar to those in America, the European Union and countries of central Europe.
One of the last empires has crumbled, toppling over as truly as the large statues on Moscow streets. As communication interactivity increases, centralized control in all organizational structures is under siege.
I have often reflected on the significant empowerment represented by the mimeographed documents circulated privately by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton to friends during the turbulent sixties. This “underground” communications network gave Merton and his colleagues an opportunity to interact on human rights issues of that time. It was a forum for Merton’s ideas within an organizational structure struggling to move away from rigid centralized control.
The noted business consultant Peter Drucker predicts new types of organizations, due to computer-distributed messages. To be effective, the current pyramid corporate structure will be recycled into fewer management layers, with many mid-management slots disappearing altogether. The new leader will be like a symphony conductor, says Drucker, coordinating employees grouped around tasks instead of having personnel arranged within strict departmental lines. This new leader will need collaborative skills, just as workers will need to function more as teams.
Collaboration as a strategic planning tool will provide bold new techniques for cooperative ventures—connected by multifaceted communications tools. Projects will be limited less by geography, enabling organizational personnel to communicate across town, across a country, or between continents.
There is also much room for collaborative effort between the top and the bottom as the struggle to empower people and increase efficiencies goes on.
New interactive communication tools helped to create the phenomenon of people-on-the-streets power. These tools, hopefully used with justice, will continue to inform and impact the collaborative economic and political structures to be built in this decade if the millennium is to bear the fruit of a new mediated world order.