|
Introduction
Chapter Two made the
point that culture, meaning the set of behaviours
and psychological attitudes that distinguish humans from each other
is strongly influenced by a person's societal environment, and for
the last 200 years that has meant a heavy influence from whatever
nation state an individual inhabited.
It was suggested -
what is obvious - that the process of globalization
is tending to blur cultural differences, but that language,
or rather languages in their variety slow that process since they
are the bedrock of culture. However, as people increasingly feel
themselves in a global context, rather than on a national stage,
so will culture become global rather than national.
Chapter Two also introduced
the idea that for most of human history culture has been a product
- even to some extent perhaps a by-product - of the 'groupish'
way of life that evolution dictated as the
route towards species supremacy. The nation state was characterized
as a pathological manifestation of groupishness. Even though it
had its role in the development of the modern world, it has led
to the destruction of the folkways, the group-based principles upon
which people had based their cultures ever since they stood up and
started to talk to each other. Chapter Two showed how many of the
contributing facets of culture will be affected by the process of
globalization in the next century, and how that process may result
in a return to more 'groupish' ways of living as the nation state
fades from its pole position in the consciousness
of the individual.
In an attempt to understand
and predict what may happen to human society in the 21st century
and beyond, it is instructive to examine the features of society
that inculcate and form (inform) culture in individuals.
A list of the more
important of these might run as follows:
Language
Parenting and Education
Sport
Newspapers, television
and the movies
The Internet
The arts
Religion
Politics
Language
The probable future
of language was discussed in Chapter Two. At the present stage of
brain research, it's not possible to be sure
whether language is simply an interface, or whether it is involved
in the storage of absolute meaning. If the former, children will
learn to communicate via implanted bio-electronic
devices, and language, perhaps some form of highly stylized English,
will be used only as a store of historical information. Even that
may not be necessary: if machines come to imitate the workings of
the human brain (something that is explored in Chapter Twelve) then
they could presumably imitate the non-linguistic storage of concepts
and syntax as easily as they will shortly be able to imitate language
itself.
Most people, however,
probably think that at least some types of meaning are stored in
linguistic form. There may be a distinction between words which
can be (and are) represented by non-linguistic cognitive contents,
and words which cannot, corresponding to the distinction between
concepts which predated symbolic language
(eg the concept of a hill) which are adequately represented in images,
and symbolic linguistic concepts such as names, the description
of time etc, which are understood badly if at all other than through
words. It is interesting that writers on consciousness
have tended to see names, time words and other culturally advanced
linguistic representations as having arrived very late on, as recently
perhaps as the dawn of recorded history, for which indeed they are
a necessary and perhaps sufficient condition.
A compound word such
as the Acropolis carries within itself both the concept of a hill,
presumed to be stored as an image, and the
name 'Acropolis', which is stored in a lexicon. What we don't yet
know is whether that name storage is in some way photographic, or
whether via reference to phonemes, or by some other as yet undescribed
storage method. Quite possibly it would be by a mixture of all of
these.
The brain is rather
amazing at storing linguistic concepts, whatever the method employed;
but it has limitations, particularly for older people. There will
be no need in future, however, to be limited by the brain's current
lexical capacity; a complete set of currently used linguistic concepts
and symbols can be contained in a bio-electronic or purely electronic
lexicon which would be available to all individuals (either external
or implanted). This would represent an extension of consciousness:
not just Tower Hill and the Acropolis, but lots of other hills as
well would be available in the lexicon. Hills already assimilated
into a person's psyche would be tagged as
such; other hills would have contextual/keyword tags and would be
available as needed.
The types of word for
which separate storage is needed in the brain are probably those
which might as well be the same in all languages. 'Hour' or 'mercy'
don't seem to carry a lot of separate national or other cultural
significance. Interestingly, though, it is quite hard to think of
a name-word which doesn't have extraneous resonances for particular
cultures; think of 'Thatcher', 'Orinoco', 'Sahara', 'Rome' or 'Sirius'.
If linguistic forms
are necessary to the creation and expression of at least some types
of conceptual ideas, then language will remain in use. Different
languages will not have a purpose in most adult communication because
of the ease of machine translation between different languages;
but it would still be necessary for children to learn a language,
simply to develop their 'acquis humanitaire'. It's a presumably
unpopular conclusion that different languages might not remain in
use. Without adult need for language, what would be the purpose
of having more than one language?
But then there is poetry,
and literature and song. Despite all the difficulties of interpretation
after four thousand years we still go to Greek plays. On the other
hand we don't dance around the may-pole or sacrifice goats.
Perhaps what is to
be expected is a prolonged period in which language-based cultures
are preserved for speakers of individual languages, while every-day
social and business affairs are conducted via translation devices,
and new forms are developed to contain, communicate and propagate
artistic and philosophical content in which linguistic forms play
a lesser role. Such forms are described in Chapter Twelve. Eventually,
however, spoken language as we know it will probably disappear,
and there will of course be no need for written language once direct
'brain to computer' communication is established, even if some types
of word remain in use in the human cognitive space. The time-scale
is perhaps 1/200 years; maybe less.
Turning back to culture,
it is to be expected that the 'langue maternelle' sort of culture
- nursery rhymes and so on - would persist in its variegated hues
for some time to come, but that grown-up culture, in so far as it
is delivered via language, will become subject to globalization
tendencies, at least in the mainstream of human affairs.
Technology
which enables at least partially non-linguistic cognitive communication
between groups of individuals - described in Chapter 12 onwards
- is likely to play an increasing role in human affairs from the
middle of the 21st century onwards, and while it will enormously
increase the depth and variety of inter-personal communication will
usher in a further lessening of the role of language in our society.
Parenting
And Education
It is one of the most
often lamented features of the last 100 years that 'the family has
broken down'. This breakdown - which is measurable and universal
in more economically advanced countries - is blamed for a variety
of society's ills, alongside the rise of the nation
state. It might be fairer to say, alongside the rise of dirigiste,
socialist, nanny-type nation states, which have indeed tended to
weaken family responsibilities as part of a general hollowing-out
of individual social and moral responsibility.
The Bolsheviks tried
to replace suspect family acculturation with a state equivalent.
That failed dismally. Lack of adequate family acculturation is widely
and no doubt correctly blamed for anti-social and criminal behaviour
among the young.
Economic factors will
continue to drive families apart for the foreseeable future, and
as much as the Internet will tend to reinforce
groupishness among people, and is clearly reigniting interest in
the kin-group, it's not clear that it can help early socialization
in a kin-group setting, at least not until advances in bio-electronic
technology allow the participation of individuals in a shared cognitive
space.
There is a good side
to the atomization of families, though. Young people thrown on their
own resources by separation from their families (often at first
by going to university, increasingly in a foreign country) are more
open to cultural challenge and innovation than if they had remained
at home. Here the Internet clearly does have a part to play; indeed
it may be the crowbar that is needed to unblock the rusty conservatism
of the educational process in general.
It would
not be right to say that school primary and secondary education
(firmly in the grip of nation states, after all) has played a major
role in the cultural expansion we have witnessed in the last 50
years. Curriculae are woefully archaic, and teachers unions are
a highly conservative force in cultural terms.
Education
- or the lack of it - may be one of the greatest failures of the
nation state. It has to be expected that monopolies (and education,
until very recently, has been exactly that in most nation states)
will fail to deliver the goods that are required, and governments
are the least likely type of organization to understand the problem,
being monopolies themselves.
Choice
in education is what the customer (the parent) wants, and seldom
gets. This is not going to change quickly, although there are some
hopeful signs, such as the International Schools Movement, which
was described in Chapter Two. Countries will cling to their (often
nationalistic) teaching models for as long as possible, and there
is not much help to be expected from international organizations.
Human rights unfortunately don't yet extend
to the child: when teachers or parents are ignorant or bigoted they
still seemingly have a divine right to limit and distort childrens'
psyches.
Still,
it will happen eventually, in a top-down kind of way, beginning
with tertiary and adult education, where customer-led change is
already well under way, and moving down the age groups. The Internet,
of course, will play a major role in this process. Already it forms
a means of delivery of alternative cultural content into schools.
Teachers can be lazy like the rest of us, and will readily accept
well-packaged educational content for direct delivery to their classes,
once the desk-top computer is a standard feature of classrooms.
That day may not be too far off, at least in richer countries.
Schools
badly need to change. It is just about unbelievable that in most
countries children of mixed abilities and even ages still sit in
rows in ugly, uncomfortable classrooms listening to bored or boring
teachers, subject to racial or sexual harassment and bullying. It
is no wonder that the kids spend most of their time texting each
other.
As in
so many other spheres, it will surely be the Internet that breaks
the mould. Once there is competition between providers of, say,
basic mathematical courses on the Internet, the school may become
just an enabling institution. In fact, it is hard to see why schools
would need to exist at all in their current, wildly expensive and
ineffectual form. Groups of parents could
take over supervision in private user groups or could hire teachers
to supervise ad hoc groups of matched children in a wide variety
of educational environments (all those useless libraries, for instance).
A teacher
combines a number of functions, most of which can be provided more
efficiently and more cheaply by the Internet - including the setting
of tasks, the explaining of concepts, the setting of examinations,
the marking of them and of course-work, the comparison of achievement
against one's peers and against absolute standards. The remaining
roles of the teacher - to supervize, to discipline, to amuse and
to motivate - can be provided in a variety of formats, robotic
teachers included. Robots with human cognitive attributes are clearly
going to exist within a very few years.
Some of
these possibilities could be explored now, but they are obscured
by the existence of private schooling in rich countries, and the
hidebound nature of the state educational systems and their practitioners
and their unions. If the boundaries were abolished, new variants
would spring up. Already, even at state schools, after lessons,
parents spend the rest of the day carting their children around
between ballet classes, extra maths etc.
While
deconstruction of the existing educational process (a recent invention,
anyway, since education was provided very effectively without the
State's help until the 19th century) is almost
certainly a good thing, there would always be merit is having some
communal classes in order to develop groupish skills, but they could
be exactly that - socialization classes.
It is
a reasonable assumption that international norms will develop for
the educational process, both in terms of curriculae and methodology.
The beginnings of this process can be seen in the International
Schools Movement, and it will be pushed along by the Internet, together
with the dissolution of language barriers, which will accelerate
with the advent of effective machine translation, beginning in the
2020s.
Sport
Here we
are on firmer ground. The extent of globalization of rule-making
and dispute resolution in sport was described in Chapter Two; this
process can only continue.
National
allegiances and stereotypes certainly persist, but sport has already
become international, thanks to television. Certain sports will
continue to bulk large in national self-images and national culture,
as for instance football (for all countries) and cricket (for the
British Commonwealth), but even there internationalization is creeping
in. Many of the superstars of British football are foreigners -
French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Brazilian. Several major British
football clubs are owned by foreigners, indeed many more are publicly
listed and open to foreign takeover. What would you say about the
place of football in the cultural make-up
of a Chelsea fan, whose club is owned by a Russian billionaire,
managed by a Spaniard and fields a majority of non-British players?
The process
has gone further in sports such as tennis, whose leading personalities
have become more or less detached from their nationality. Fans of
Maria Sharapova or Roger Federer support their heroes not because
of nationality, either their own or the player's. Tennis,
by the way, is played and watched predominantly in English. Almost
all tennis stars can speak the language, and they all have English-language
web-sites, which in some cases are major businesses in their own
right.
It is
true that the Davis Cup continues to focus national rivalries, but
it is a sideshow in terms of television coverage, money, or cultural
impact. As with tennis, so also with motor racing, winter sports,
wrestling, golf, and a host of other televisual sports. They are
all star-based sports, and often seem more part of the entertainment
industry than true sports. (What is a true sport?) Definitely they
are part of a cultural mosaic which has an increasingly global tinge.
The Olympic
Games are of course firmly based on national competition, and this
will not change soon. However, sporting stars also compete at the
Olympics and attract as much media attention as national teams.
Long-term, it would not be surprising to see the element of individual
competition elbowing out national competition even at the Olympics.
Certainly this will happen in terms of media coverage and cultural
footprint even if the Olympic organization itself continues to cling
to national boundaries.
Sporting
fan-clubs are a prime example of the role played by the Internet
in fostering globalization in a groupish kind of way. Certainly,
there are still some sports with a high level of national or regional
awareness, of which football must be the leading example. But even
in football, stars such as David Beckham have their international
fan-clubs, largely operated through the Internet,
whose members would presumably stay about the same as the hero concerned
moves club or country. Imagine a group of Schumacher's fans, from
a number of different countries, gathering in a bar after a Formula
One race in - say - Italy. Of course they will talk in English,
perhaps with a smattering of other language words. What could be
more groupish, more globalized, or less national?
Newspapers,
Television and the Movies
For an
adult, 'the media' is probably the main channel through which culture
is reinforced, absorbed and varied. Language
forms the greater part of this cultural input, and much of what
was said above about language also applies to the future of the
media. That is to say, linguistic translation devices will have
a major impact on the form and content of media communication. This
will manifest itself in television and the movies (and their delivery
through the Internet) before it affects printed newspapers.
By 2040,
it seems unlikely that there will be any further use for devices
or auditoria that have screens to display graphical images or for
loudspeakers to replay sounds. Images and sounds (and for that matter
tastes, feelings and smells) will be delivered directly to the brain's
sensory input channels by wireless, magnetism
or through bionic implants. This does not spell immediate doom for
the movie industry. Cinemas have already converted themselves to
offer entertainment experiences rather than just movies as such.
And how wonderful to be able to take your foreign boy- or girl-friend
to a movie and enjoy the experience in your own native languages
(from 2020 or so when machine language translation has been perfected).
There will presumably be a long period between say 2015 and 2040
during which the entertainment industry will
gradually adapt its products and delivery methods to the oncoming
technologies described in this and succeeding chapters.
On the
Internet, there may be an intermediate
stage in which content is displayed in a language chosen by the
user. At home, hybrid televisual/internet systems may similarly
use local electronics to display and voice content in an appropriate
language. No more clumsy voice-overs or dubbing!
As to
whether the content itself will be national or global: that
depends on the future of national languages. National movie and
television industries are heavily protected and supported by governments
through tax-breaks and cultural barriers and
this will surely continue to be so as long as separate national
languages persist. Multi-country or regional television channels
exist courtesy of multi-country languages, viz Al Jazheera, CNN
or the BBC World Service. There are French and Spanish equivalents.
News dissemination in the European Union is a 20-language nightmare.
As explained
above, however, by 2030 national languages will be starting to give
way before the assault of instant machine translation, and this
will be the signal for the growing globalization
of everyday experience in terms of sport, business, the arts and
politics to be reflected in linguistic expression. By 2050 it is
likely that a high proportion of linguistic media content will be
created in English (but experienced in native languages). By 2100,
it is likely, as explained in the Language paragraphs above, that
language will have become redundant for most types of human expression;
or, if it turns out that brains do require
words to form and experience certain types of concept, that a common
language will be in use for those few concepts that cannot be expressed
or communicated as imagined images. Stores
of historical data will remain in linguistic form, of course, and
researchers will use language to study them. It is also possible
that great literature and plays will continue to be experienced
in legacy linguistic form; as mentioned above, this depends on whether
or not their essence turns out to be communicable without the use
of words.
It's pretty
certain that the word 'hill' will have been substituted in movies
by a non-linguistic representation of a hill, infinitely more shaded
and meaningful than the word itself. Try imagining a hill, green
perhaps, with sheep dotted around, a few copses clinging to the
steeper ravines, and swallows wheeling overhead. Now, be honest,
do you really need words to describe that to yourself? Why then
would you need words to communicate it to a fellow human being,
once the mechanisms of expression and communication have been understood?
On the other hand, it is not so easy to form a picture of love.
Perhaps one could communicate the feeling of love without words,
even so. But then try imagining (imaging) mercy. You might be able
to picture an example of mercy, but the concept? It is not exactly
a feeling as such. So maybe there will be a residual use for conceptual
linguistic symbols - evolutionary biologists
now suppose that it was the invention of symbolic thought (not just
words) that marked the great cognitive leap forward for early humans.
Naturally,
developments in the machine (electronic) representation of human
thoughts, concepts, emotions and symbols are a key part of the construction
of adequate robotic devices. This subject is dealt with in Chapter
Thirteen.
Newspapers
and magazines are the spiritual home of national print languages
and as long as a language continues to be learned and used in a
country, newspapers will survive in that language. The extinction
of newspapers at the hands of the Internet
is frequently prophesied; they are expensive to produce, dirty to
handle, bulky and carry much material that is redundant for any
given reader. But all this is outweighed by their convenience. It
will not be until national languages are supplanted by non-linguistic
communication, or the development of a common language, that newspapers
will disappear, although paper as such may be supplanted by an electronic
version of itself by as early as 2020. Between 2050 and 2080, however,
as effective direct delivery of cognitive content
begins to bypass visual and auditory sensory channels, they will
fade away, and by 2100 they will have gone, along with all paper
or non-electronic representations of media content. But you don't
need to sell those shares just yet!
Another
characteristic of existing media which can be expected to change
rapidly is that they are typically highly standardized. Movies,
books and television programs are mass-market products. This is
partly a result of technological limitations, and partly a reflection
of mass cultural similarities, in which of course national self-stereotypes
play a large role. It will be clear from previous chapters that
globalization and the Internet will combine to offer individuals
access to a far wider range of cultural possibilities than most
people currently experience, leading to an explosion - already visible
and already remarked upon - of 'niche' interests which can be served
by new forms of media using sophisticated content management and
distribution techniques. Needless to say, this is a highly 'groupish'
phenomenon: when say 50 people can not only identify a common set
of interests even when they have never met before, but can readily
and cheaply obtain media feeds of various types accurately tailored
to that set of interests, it is evident that the old model of standardized
content and distribution will quickly die. This new type of medium
can already be seen in operation, although so far in fairly primitive
form, on sites such as Google.
The
Internet
Much of
what needs to be said regarding the cultural impact of the Internet
is implicit in what has already been written about language and
the media.
Just because
the Internet already uses electronic representations of linguistic
and non-linguistic content (before laboriously turning it back into
words and pictures) it will be the leader in the use of new forms
of representation of human cultural products; and just because the
Internet was from the beginning global, it
will most always be the first place that globalized cultural expression
will show itself.
However,
at least until non-linguistic communication becomes a reality, the
Internet is as bound as any other medium by national languages.
Other
than in the use of language, the Internet is already in the vanguard
of the globalization of sport, education, the law, business, the
arts, ethics, life-style, etc etc. But, importantly,
as remarked before, the Internet allows and encourages minority
interests and groups just as much or even more than it encourages
'global' cultural expression.
Just one,
slightly macabre example, to illustrate this. When checking on the
'groupishness' of the Internet, that is, making sure that it does
encourage the expression of the human tendency to affiliate, a search
was done on the word 'rus' as in toysRus and so on. Immediately
up came stumps 'R us and, no, it's not a cricketing group, it's
amputees!!
The
Arts
This is
a big field, including music, dance, song, painting, poetry, literature,
plays and film, as well as combinations of them and possibly newer
types of creative communication. Language,
with all the implications sketched out above, is involved in song,
poetry, plays and film. The other arts are more or less language-independent.
Language-dependent
or otherwise, most art forms are quite tied to the nation
state at present. There is not much danger that an Impressionist
picture of Paris will be mistaken for a Social Realist townscape
in Siberia, or a Mexican bodega painted by Diego Rivera. But that
is perhaps mostly because the subject matter is national in character.
Stylistically, impressionism was more or less the same everywhere,
with some time lags, as in music, the forms of musical composition
tended to vary just about in step across a wide swathe of countries
(cultures). There is nothing 'national' about the string quartet,
even if it did originate in Austro-Hungary. Composers from all countries
have used that form, and still do, although it is a bit out of fashion
at the moment among composers. The same goes for popular culture
and fashion. Styles have always crossed national boundaries. Indeed,
that is just one more proof that it is language, and the nation
states which made it into their competitive banner, which is to
blame for the antagonism of different linguistically-based cultures.
It is
significant that the best writers are widely translated - always
said to be 'universal' - Shakespeare and Dostoevsky for example.
Where is national culture in this?
The
arts are perhaps more a reflection of cultural norms than a cause
of them. If national languages remain, they will be expressed through
the arts; if a common language develops, likewise. Images
are less tied to nation states; or at any rate they can be understood
widely even if they are national in character. An image of the destruction
of the World Trade Center in New York in 2001 may cause different
reactions in different people; but its objective reality is crystal
clear to almost everyone on the planet. Everyone who watches television,
that is.
In
so far as the arts reflect the reality of the world as it is, they
have already become globalized, through images such as those of
the twin towers, and millions of other, less terrible happenings.
That means, surely, that the image library in people's heads has
already become globalized? A high proportion of people from almost
all nations and cultures has seen the Berlin Wall being knocked
down, the Titanic sinking (real or imagined, it doesn't matter),
a man walking on the moon, the Great Wall of China, a man and a
woman riding horses on the beach, the tsunami, cherry trees in Washington,
a Russian spy dying of radiation poisoning, baby seals, the World
Cup (there is only one!). This list of universal images could be
1,000 times as long, and you would still have barely started cataloguing
the shared picture library of human beings. It is already globalized,
and will not be turned back.
The existence
of a common (globalized) library of images, cognitive concepts and
cultural 'memes' implies the possibility, as
mentioned above under The Media, that small niche groups can form
on a globalized basis. That has always been possible on a national
or local scale. Although held back by communication limitations,
there are of course such groups in existence as the The Friends
of Battle Arts Festival, the Rome Operatic and Dramatic Society,
Nevada, and the Omsk Association of Balalaika Players. There would
seem to be no limits, through the Internet,
of the scope for formation of a bewildering number of affiliations
of this type, especially when language ceases to be a barrier.
Religion
What
is the globalization of religion? Does it mean the globalization
of ethical structures? That is happening through globalized rule-making
bodies such as FIFA, the WTO
and alternative reality worlds, which tend
to follow strictly groupish models.
Culturally
speaking, religions are dead meat in 'Western' countries. It doesn't
look this way in the USA; but this is just a
'lost generation' looking for spiritual sustenance in a morally
barren world. The urge to affiliate is so strong that people will
do all kinds of nutty things like becoming scientologists or terrorists
if they are not offered more satisfying alternatives. There weren't
too many terrorists in 1400, since the media and public opinion,
which are the proximate targets of terrorists, didn't exist. There
were criminals, outlaws and roving bands of opportunistic soldiers,
it's true, but most of them just didn't believe in anything, which
is a different problem (we still have it). Goya. Actually, believing
in nothing and believing in nutty religions are about the same -
they are both responses to an ungrounded world.
In most
non-'Western' countries, including of course Islamic states, religion
retains its primary ethical significance; but this has to be seen
as a corollary of the stage of development of the societies concerned,
and is likely to change rapidly as the Internet and other types
of media make inroads into popular education in such regions.
Although
religion has lost its efficacy as a store and provider of morality
in many parts of the world, it still provides necessary psychological
support for large numbers of humans. The leaders of major Western
democracies continue to need to put themselves forward as practising
Christians, regardless of their true beliefs. And the outraged reaction
to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion,
published in 2006, much of it no doubt hypocritical, shows that
religion is still a no-go area for social reformers.
The picture
will look very different by 2030, and religion can be assumed to
have a rapidly diminishing contribution to make to human culture
during the first half of the 21st century. It is important to stress,
as ever, that ethics and morality need to have a very high profile
in human life; it is simply that they will be delivered in other
ways.
Politics
'Politics'
was defined in Chapter Five for the purposes of this book as the
'governance' of a country (or a region or indeed
the whole world): the tasks which are subject to the political process
include the making and upholding of laws, including the legislature
and the judiciary; the raising of taxes and debt; the formation
and carrying out of spending programmes; issuance and maintenance
of a currency; defence; the conduct of an administration; the provision
of services including education, health, welfare and pensions.
Judged
against these criteria, global political
activity is at an early stage of development, and among formal global
organizations it looks more like nation state
competition than the expression of global political ideas. Most
international organizations are oligarchic rather than democratic,
thus not needing - and they don't display - political behaviour.
The IOC is a good example.
Organisations
such as the WTO, the UN, the WHO, the IMF,
and the World Bank attract political activity on the part of their
member states, or sometimes (a bit more global) on the part of regional
groupings of states. Thus, organisations grouping the 'non-developed'
or the 'non-aligned' or the 'Caribbean' states have political roles
in the formation of policy at a multilateral level.
However,
politics addressed to electors hardly exists at a global level except
perhaps in the EU where it is just beginning.
For true global political activity one has to look to the emergence
of popular global movements.
'Popular'
organizations such as Greenpeace, greens in
general, and environmentalists in general have global messages to
deliver, and global support. Anti-globalisers are probably a popular
global movement, although their ideas are so muddled that it is
hard to put a meaningful label on them.
'Popular'
doesn't have to mean soft left. It is to be expected that global
organizations will develop to work on behalf of shareholders, consumers,
students, and other groups. There is every reason to think that
such organizations will come to have rule-making and even judicial
powers in the same way as producer groups, although as in so many
other sectors, it will take the demolition of language
barriers before truly popular, global, political organizations emerge.
|