THE COMPANY STORE

Dick Pountain/PC Pro/Idealog 224 06/03/2013

I recently reviewed a interesting book, "Carbon Democracy" by Timothy Mitchell (Verso 2011), which analyses the effect of different energy sources on politics. Very brutally condensed, Mitchell argues that our political institutions are profoundly shaped by the types of *energy flow* we employ. A coal-based economy spawned the industrial revolution and the rise of mass democracies, while the displacement of coal by oil is tending to erode those democracies. Early humans consumed energy that came almost directly from the sun: photosynthesis provided plants for food and wood for dwellings and fire, and both hunter-gatherers and early cultivators consumed plants and animals close to where they lived, with no need for extensive transport networks. Coal changed all that by providing both the means to create, and the need for, a network of factories connected by railways, and the new social disciplines this enforced are those we still more or less live by.

Unlike coal, oil almost mines itself. It spouts to the surface under its own pressure, and although advanced technology is required to discover deposits and drill wells, the highly-skilled workers are few compared to coal miners, and remain above ground where they're easier to supervise and enjoy less autonomy. As a liquid, oil can be sent over vast distances via pipeline and tanker using little human labour, and its global distribution ensures that supplies can be diverted by a single phone call to neutralise a strike at one location. Hence the switch from coal to oil reduces the ability of labour to disrupt energy flows and hands that power instead to large oil companies, granting them the ability to threaten governments and dictate foreign policy (the post-WWII Marshall Plan was in part designed to switch Europe from coal to oil and introduce US-style industrial relations). I'm impressed by Mitchell's approach, which makes sense of a lot of stuff happening today, but I'm sure he wouldn't disagree if I say that it's just one layer of an explanation, and that adding a similar approach to *information flows* (means of communication) would be a valuable complement.

There have been shelf-loads of starry-eyed books about what the internet is going to mean for the future of human societies. Many imagine small rural communities of Hobbit houses, buried deep in the woods, living on home-baked spelt bread and organic beetroot soup while swapping kitten pictures with kindred spirits the world over on Facebook. There are a few grumpy dissenters from this fluffy view, notably Jonathon Meades who in "Isle of Rust" describes something structurally similar, but the real village on Lewis and Harris he visits is littered with rusting car chassis and its inhabitants dwell on the net as a way of completely ignoring their immediate environment. He imagines humans in 2113 revering the detritus as sacred objects from a distant pre-apocalyptic era when we still had oil and electricity.

And so to Microsoft's (and Adobe's, and Apple's) software licensing policies (which you might think rather a long leap). The more positive future models assume that, as a response to climate change, these Net-Hobbit communities in the woods will be fuelled by distributed renewable sources of energy and ruled by equally distributed libertarian social structures, a sort of cyber-anarchism. But what they're not? Mitchell's methodology suggests something more like a net-mediated feudalism, ruled over by a handful of giant corporations. Why? Because Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon are rushing toward a vision of *renting* rather than *selling* their services. You won't be able to own their software outright but will have to pay for it over again every month, as you do for electricity and gas, and perhaps music and other entertainment. A step backward to an economy where people earn money simply by owning stuff, rather than by investing and employing other people. Fail to pay and you'll get kicked out of the global village.

I recently had an email chat with our Online Business columnist Kevin Partner about the way Adobe will soon be wanting £50 a month for the graphics tools he relies on (he plans to buy some alternative before it's too late). This is not a new economic model, but rather one with a long and disreputable history. It's how Mississippi share croppers and Kentucky coal-miners used to live, owing more money to the company store for groceries than they ever earned, which ensured their continuing servitude. To salute this brave new vision I've taken the liberty of writing an updated lyric for Merle Travis's famous 1946 song "Sixteen Tons": 

                           "You upload sixteen gigs and what do you get,
                             Another day older and deeper in debt,
                             St Peter don't you call me 'cos I can't go,
                             I owe my soul to the virtual store..."