I hold the view that small communities will become the norm again - the typical large cities of the industrial era being the product of impoverishment of the countryside and of the need for dense labour forces in factories and offices. The last, of course, will no longer be required in an age of automation and efficient communications.
Accordingly, I have been watching the early stages of new types of community, such as LETS systems and Ithaca HOURS systems, with very great interest indeed. I am sure that there are also many more intentional communities being planned or started that I'm not aware of. It may be that these experiments will take quite a long time to establish best practice and new traditions, but I am generally hopeful that, in due course (though this may take a decade or two), such communities will be able to restore well-being and security for ordinary people.
There is a danger meanwhile that the jobless and part-timers will retrench into ghettoes of their own, living apart from the gradually shrinking proportion of the population who are fortunate enough to remain in well-paid jobs.
I suggest that we must not be hopeful that governments can find the solution (or afford it if they found one) and that we must look for the solution from within the daily circumstances of people who are suffering from the present worsening situation. Many people are trying to adjust in individual ways, even though welfare payments from governments are declining and impoverishment grows. Others (a minority) are trying, as already mentioned, to form new forms of communities in which they can improve their efforts by mutual exchange of services.
If there is to be hope in both cases, I would suggest that they will need many more skills than they have at present. However, as government expenditure retrenches, education is going to become increasingly expensive. For cultural and financial reasons, an increasing number of people are going to be denied any chance of acquiring skills for paid-jobs (as they become increasingly specialised) and for more ordinary daily circumstances (eg carpentry, growing vegetables, saving energy, equipment maintenance, medical care, etc, etc).
However, in the Internet we have the potential for a new instructional and informational technology that can offer almost any skill. Considering that the performance/price ratio of the PCs, modems, etc, has increased at least a million-fold in the last 15 years, then, in 15 years' time, the potential for a versatile and sophisticated instructional technology must be phenomenal - even to the poorest among us.
Now I don't want to upset those who are already involved within the given educational system. Many of them, I know, are valiantly trying to aim in the same direction. I would suggest, however, that because the present system is dependent on government funding (that is, from the decreasing numbers of taxpayer in well-paid jobs), then it will not be able to cope with the increasing needs of the jobless and those communities with insufficient internal skills.
There is, within the Internet, a project called Interpedia which can be considered to be an electronic 'uni-layered' Encyclopedia Britannica. It is a visionary and exciting project and personally I wish it all the best. If I were young and were not concerned with employment matters, I would undoubtedly join it as a fascinating activity. However, like the Encyclopedia Britannica itself, the Interpedia will only be really suitable for those who are already well-educated - and probably well-situated.
I have in mind a 'multi-layered' project so that individuals of any age and of any educational attainment can find ready access to instructional material in any skill or subject that will be of benefit to them in their daily lives - either in the day-to-day exigencies of living or in self-help instruction towards some specialised income-producing activity. It might also be useful in the encouragement of new community-based enterprises. This I call the InterSkills project.
Like the Interpedia, the InterSkills project will also involve massive and complex organisation and the help of a great many volunteers. I believe that both will be able to succeed because the number of potential volunteers on the Internet is vast - and growing.
If anybody is seriously interested in learning more about this proposition and contributing towards it, could they please make contact with me.
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX (tel 01225 442377; e-mail: <k.hudson@bbcnc.org.uk>).
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