Ch.19 Campaigns : Part 3 The Arts and Vidnet (Marta and Gallanol In The Modern Age)

24/2/99

     In group meetings ideas were proposed for the encouragement of the arts and reading. Writers had suffered in the last century or so, and particularly in the last few decades, from the reduction of their market. It was ironic that in a free and democratic society, where the freedom of the media and of literature and the arts was highly valued, and much applauded, that in fact few people read very much. All the literature of the past, and the present, was stored on the ever growing Vidnet, in its databases and sites linked throughout the world, supposedly accessible to all the billions of the world, in their rooms. Any book ever published, or at least all of those considered classic by anyone in the Vidnet age, and any published since the start of that age were available at only a few moments notice to anyone in the world. In theory then the whole population should have been wallowing in the pleasures of literature, as well as the other arts, films play, music of many kinds.

    The freedom to read was damaged by two things. One was the availability of competing pastimes and entertainments. The live channels of Televid diverted most from reading. Most felt it was better to stay in touch and up to date by watching the current news, gossip, music and film release programmes. The soap opera’s were perhaps the most popular. That was an old term now but still very much in use, amongst all kinds of working people who needed to relax and to fantasise about other pretend people’s more exciting lives.

    In the early days of Vidnet there had been massive creative and commercial outpouring of talent or energy onto the Vidnet. So many people, the better educated in particular, had been keen to express themselves upon it, talking, communicating, exchanging ideas, with new friends, colleagues or chance aquaintances all around the world. Thousands, maybe millions of ‘users’ had used it as a source of entertainment, as a means of communication, and as a place where their own creative output, however mean or simplistic it may be could be housed relatively free of any charge, published, in a sense, to the world. The drive of self expression and ambition caused many to advertise their talents and to fit Vidnet to their own needs. Very soon the Vidnet had become clogged. There was so much on it that you had to find a means of searching cleverly through the banks of data to locate what you wanted. To many, after some years it became obvious that the individual no longer had the time and energy to set his data into ‘places where it would be found by other users. The individual or business house could still talk to other chance users but could no longer effectively advertise themselves or their creativity.

     Use of the Vidnet for creative free expression dwindled over the decades, largely because people found themselves working longer hours and had not the leisure time they had previously enjoyed, but also because there was little joy in producing book reviews, self adverts, short stories et cetera if no one was going to see them. To get onto a ’place’ in the Vidnet, where work would be read and appreciated, users found they needed to go to a publishing House of some kind, as Janus had with his books. There an author was assured of appearing on current and updated menus, with the chance of being selected for later treatment as a classic when the period of current menu inclusion ran out. Publishing onto the Vidnet had again become managed by commercial organisations and was not free. You had to be good to be published. The publishers would only publish something they would make money out of.

    And so the individual creativity of the Vidnet had become eventually stifled, swallowed by a large and still growing body of creative work; films, books, programmes, games and so on. These were often of high quality, although much of it was mass produced and unthinking in its nature, put out by the larger commercial publishing Houses, and film and programme producers.

28/2/99

    At group meetings the suggestion was made that great economic expansion could occur in the arts and in leisure if only people were given more time for leisure. If a man or woman were to finish his work at 3 in the afternoon or earlier, rather than 7 or 8, what new occupations might he or she find to vary his or her lifestyle. Reading was on the decline in recent decades. Vidnet statistics showed that less people were reading now than before. They were also watching less films. They just did not have the time in life to develop these habits. Less music listened to or watched; less bars and social places visited; theatre and old singing and dancing arts were almost gone, except for performances for the ‘live’ Vidnet channels. Modern man had ceased to go out after work on the whole. They didn’t have the time. Something had weakened the natural social appetites of the past, taken the private life away from people.

    Therefore the group had discussed the potential of the arts for the salvation of the human spirit. The essential action, which agreed with all the other aims of the movement, was to reduce working hours dramatically. Long working hours were not efficient anyway. Workers became naturally dulled, lazy, and slow by the boredom inflicted by their work. The economy’s employers felt they were maximising profits by setting long working hours for their workers, which was considered the main goal by most business philosophies. The profits thus earned were not quite as great as they assumed due to the natural resistance of the victims. With shorter working hours, as long as pay could be guaranteed to be adequate, people would then take up whole ranges of leisure activities, thus stimulating the economy in other ways. They would start to go out more. Bars, concerts, theatres, dance clubs sports and other entertainments would be spawned once again in large numbers, offering many new and varied employment opportunities. Creatively minded people would begin to flourish, perhaps more than ever before, writing books, plays and film scripts. Others would take their creations onto film or the stage. People would begin to search for their inner potential once more, and be freed from the chains of the dull, philistine, work centred society they had been raised in.