The internet as soma

Over the next few days fall three 50th anniversaries.  Two of the events have become a major part of western culture and recent history, namely the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22nd November 1963 and the first episode of Doctor Who, broadcast a day later.  Here I focus on the third, the 50th anniversary of the death of Aldous Huxley, which also falls on 22nd November.

Huxley’s best-known work is Brave New World and for some reason this book is frequently compared to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.  While both books imagine a dystopian future and both predicted  a number of things that have come to pass, they are very different in their imagining of future society.

Nineteen Eighty-Four imagined a brutal world in the grip of perpetual war, where history is rewritten, the meaning and use of language is altered and surveillance is the norm.  There are many links here not only with the Soviet Union under Stalin but also with the level of surveillance carried out today, with CCTV cameras and the tapping of emails, text messages and phone calls being routine.

The society in Brave New World is less physically oppressive but rather focuses on the importance of consumerism, advances in medicine and on societal control.  The ideal sport is one that involves lots of equipment and to do your duty as a member of society you ought to spend your salary as you enjoy your leisure time.  Babies are not only created in a laboratory but are fully gestated there too, meaning that no-one has a parent and ‘mother’ has become a taboo word.  Children are conditioned, before birth with the use of chemicals and after birth using electric shocks and also by listening to audio while they sleep.  This conditioning not only prepares people physically for their future (with workers who will live in the tropics being given an immunity to malaria before they are born) and mentally (in terms of their capacity for learning) but also emotionally (a ‘Beta’ remarks that she is glad she isn’t an ‘Alpha’ because they have to work so hard but also glad she isn’t a member of one of the other classes because they wear horrible-coloured uniforms).

Leisure time revolves around the use of the drug soma, which is not only legal but the use of which is encouraged by the government.  The slogan: “a gramme is better than a damn”, refers to taking the drug.  The use of soma is linked with the state religion, ensures people are placid and that they spend their leisure time in a way that keeps them out of trouble.  If a character in the book displays any level of passion then another character is sure to suggest they take some soma.

In the same way that I earlier made links between Nineteen Eighty-Four and the present-day world, it is possible to draw comparisons between some of the themes of Brave New World and what we see around us, 80-odd years after it was written.  Examples include genetic modification and gene therapy, the acceptance and importance of consumerism and the way simple recreational pursuits now involve vast amounts of equipment (I used to put on a pair of shorts and a pair of plimsolls and go for a jog.  Nowadays there are shirts and shorts made of special fabrics, particular shoes to run in, hand-held computers, energy drinks, fluorescent tops, mobile phone apps, etc, all designed to help us run better.  All of them, coincidentally, cost rather a lot.)

What, then, is the 21st century equivalent of soma?  One could argue that it is a drug such as those used to combat ADHD, or a non-medical drug.  I want to make the case for it being the internet.

For me, born in the 1970s, TV was old hat.  It had existed before I was born and I grew up with it there.  I didn’t wonder how it worked but consumed what it produced and enjoyed it.  At that time there were three television channels and in the evening there would be ‘closedown’, when everything stopped (except perhaps on the evenings when the Open University would broadcast into the early hours).  For me “the internet” is still an amazing concept.  I watched the film War Games when it came out and marvelled at the idea that computers could be connected together.  I didn’t have an email address until after I had finished university and still have the habit of loading up lots of news webpages before beginning to read them from the days when my dial-up connection was so very slow.  I got excited when I learned how to use html and when I worked out how to create a basic website.

For children today the internet is old hat.  It has always been there and is only a means to access the content they want.  And ‘the internet’ is very different now from how it was only a few years ago.  Now almost everything children used to do is available on the internet, but with the only way of turning it off being the self-control of the user.  Instead of phoning up a friend and talking to them you can now interact with all of your friends using Facebook or Twitter.  Instead of watching TV you can see any TV programme or film by watching it on the internet.  Instead of playing physical games you can link up your games machine over the internet and play with others there.

Is this a bad thing?  Not in itself, and it is of course wonderful that we have so much choice, but it does bring to the fore the importance of self-control.  I used to be able to watch an episode of Doctor Who on the television on a Saturday night.  One episode.  If I missed it then I didn’t get to see it unless my friend who owned a video machine had recorded it.  Now it is possible to get hold of every episode with David Tennant as The Doctor online.  This might be through the BBC iPlayer, via Netflix, or on YouTube or an illegal file-sharing website.  When one episode finishes Netflix will immediately cue up the next one so you can continue to watch without distress!

It really does require a large amount of willpower to stop watching and would be very easy for a child to watch episode after episode.  The only problem with this comes for children who don’t have that willpower, or who aren’t aware that there are other things out there they could be doing instead. 

So how is the internet like soma?  Well, if you want to disengage from thought in Brave New World then you take soma.  Nowadays we can use the internet.  If you want to disengage from thought then there are scores (literally) of episodes of The Big Bang Theory you can watch, or an impossibly vast number of photos of cats looking cute, or videos of “the world’s biggest fails”, or of every goal Lionel Messi has scored this year, or … .

After spending several hours doing this you are as sedated as if you had taken a gramme of soma.  

Is this post a case of "when I were a lad ...", or "the youth of today ..." ?  Do I think that society has gone to hell in a handcart?  No, actually!  But it is important for those of us who remember a time Before the Internet to realise that children today can turn on, tune in and drop out in front of their computer.

So amongst the reviews of the life and times of JFK and the anniversary of Doctor Who, I would encourage everyone to read some Huxley and to enjoy the prescience of Brave New World in particular.