A TELLING VICTORY

It is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion par­a­digm to match Guten­berg’s in­ven­tion of the print­ing press.

I can­not be­lieve I just wrote that, but I have to come to ac­cept it. Hum­ble pie.

I still loathe it in so many ways, not least be­cause it is a killer of con­ver­sa­tion, a fre­quent, grotesque ves­sel of mis­in­for­ma­tion and fos­terer of van­ity and thought­less brevity. To par­rot is not wis­dom.

But... In this gal­lop­ing age of tech­nol­ogy, speed, over­load and re­sis­tance to de­tail and toil for truth, I ac­cept that mo­bile de­vices, our per­sonal thread within the web, are now the ul­ti­mate means, whether we like it or not, by which to in­flu­ence the masses, form opin­ions, to bring change.

This gad­get, one I spurned for a very long time, has, crit­i­cally, har­nessed an­other pearl of power that grows ever more ab­sorb­ing and in­flu­en­tial in its sim­ple truth - that an in­stant image, pho­to­graph or video, can speak a thou­sand words.

Just a few years ago a great many peo­ple across Eu­rope, and cer­tainly the Dis­united King­dom of my birth, hadn’t the faintest idea Cat­alo­nia ex­isted. They do now. Im­ages of riot po­lice in body ar­mour and hel­mets club­bing un­armed peo­ple of all ages, pulling women by their hair, draw­ing blood with ba­tons, spilled around the globe. Sud­denly any­one with a mo­bile was a re­porter, or a watcher.

Now Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodímir Ze­len­ski and his peo­ple are ap­ply­ing this par­a­digm with crit­i­cal ef­fect. He knows the power of it and how to apply it. And it is prov­ing a telling vic­tory. The world will never be the same and the void be­tween two gen­er­a­tions of states­men yawns ever wider be­fore our eyes.

How dire and dis­tress­ing the ever dark­en­ing im­ages em­a­nat­ing from Ukraine.

Words alone still have enor­mous power, even given dis­tor­tion, the chal­lenge of know­ing who or what to be­lieve and the in­ces­sant stream of numb­ing non­sense now com­ing at us from all di­rec­tions, much of it ir­rel­e­vant to - and a dis­trac­tion from - our lives and im­me­di­ate sphere of hap­pi­ness, in­flu­ence and re­la­tion­ships. There is also the mat­ter of cer­tain on­line sites pro­vid­ing a plat­form for sound­bite nar­cis­sis­tic nut­ters, some of whom are be­yond the pale.

That is why I re­sisted car­ry­ing a mini com­puter around in my pocket. There was no es­cape. I fi­nally suc­cumbed for rea­sons of my work and fam­ily – being able to see and talk to dis­tant loved ones is an in­valu­able pos­i­tive, and the com­pet­i­tive world of busi­ness re­quires I pay at­ten­tion some of the time and try and keep up. There is al­ways the off switch, and the op­tion to leave my mo­bile on my desk and walk into the for­est.

But at this vital mo­ment this con­nec­tion is defin­ing, every minute, what we have and have not learned and what changes are upon us as a con­se­quence.

The bru­tal im­ages of death and de­struc­tion in Ukraine are thump­ing into our con­sciences, in­deli­bly. It is a wa­ter­shed, po­lit­i­cally and also tech­no­log­i­cally. Ukraini­ans have been able to pho­to­graph and share al­most im­me­di­ately their un­think­able night­mare and suf­fer­ing through com­mon place palm-of-the-hand tech. It is an im­mense power for the peo­ple. Russ­ian re­cruits have also re­sorted to it in their des­per­a­tion.

Im­ages from mo­biles have stirred peo­ple around the globe to help, to raise their voices, and such sound can change the course of his­tory. If we sur­vive this des­per­ate chap­ter, the next, per­haps cli­mate col­lapse, will bring equal can­dour, clam­our and ac­tion.