To write about the future of PR is nothing but explanation of present challenges with some respect to different ethics that define human civilisation. We can write about vision; but the vision is nothing but the will of this moment that is planning reorganisation of something. Such a will, such a vision can be actualised in organisations in which we can rely at least on some buttons that we can push on. Such buttons can be found in small companies, much harder in larger companies and in larger and more complex systems like city or state those buttons, as they might be seen, are only illusions. If we move to even more complex system such as PR as a relatively young practice with poorly developed governance systems, with still relatively shallow conceptual base and extremely rapid growth, than we can expect a vision to represent a result of multitude of spontaneous processes and is going to be seen later for what it is now. But: is this not an evolutionary principle valid for each and every complex living organism?
Lost word
If we know (?) that language does not represent a language tool but a tool of mastering environment, people, yourself, …, then practitioners of PR should understand, that we are living in a time when the illusion, that such power rests in written world, is breaking. In 40.000 years if not 100.000 years of human civilisation history a period of Guttenberg represents les than 1 % of it. 1% on a surface of 10% of time in which we know that our civilisation is striving to “freeze”, operationalize, oral stories in writing. Writing created an opportunity to execute this transfer of power easier, faster and wider. Guttenberg invention gave possibility to industrialize stories as transfers of real power. Guttenberg thus killed whole storytelling industry that represented the most common socialisation technique in pre-Guttenberg period and moved it into libraries. If we could locate old Greek peripatetic teacher walking in a garden we find contemporary teacher facing sweating parent that is believing that books replaced his role as a socialiser and has completely forgotten silent winter nights telling stories to his family by the fire. Contemporary schools with their apparent weakness in mastering its pupil’s beautifully prove that mastering does not rest in written world but in oral stories (words). Where there is no story we find a school as a battlefield without rules where the book becomes a physical weapon.
Since language is a tool of mastering, and since mastering of environment is one of conditions for life, we can find a fact that Guttenberg era is dissolving as a good sign. With a proliferation of printed word, with the fact that Guttenberg printing machinery enacted massive duplications and with even larger proliferation that came with WWW, we now have each word easy copied for each individual many times. With this ease came necessary a thorough disintegration of written word. The written word lost its power. Since Humanity did not loose a need to master it/s environment, where then slipped this mastering field?
On the first sight we could find an answer in a field of technology. Do we find these fields of mastering in iPad apps, as we can already hear from technopeace activists? Good case! (Of course, I wrote it!) This case does not only reveal the partiality of different-peace-activists (partiality that is similar to one that they are fighting against), but reveals also an illusion of creationism, illusion that we (someone) can master our environment.
What has a fear about the power of one technology, one corporation, one person, one god, to do with creationism and what it has to do with PR? At least what it has to do with PR we should manage fast. Are not exactly PR practitioners gardeners of the word and thus gardeners of power? Is not PR a practice that manages tools, that enable interaction between publics, and is thus nothing but a way to master environment to acquire higher fitness?
The answer on a question of creationism that can be understood as a personalisation of power can be found in that part of The Bible, that represents the finest symptom of it/s renouncement. Gospel of John starts with: “In the beginning there was a word”. This introduction clearly puts in function everything that is on earth and in heaven. It tells that everything has a function in relation to the word regardless it/s sacral or profane origin. It tells us that we can believe that we can turn something, that technology can turn something, that institution can turn something – but that the final turn belongs to the word. It tells us same story that was explained by Charles Darwin 150 years ago when he moved a creation as a function from an individual, species or higher social structure on the level of blind replication and mutation.
Back to power
Every myth that is grounded on a search of a “lost word” and thus “lost power” should be understood as a rational explanation of the source of power that is embedded in a word, but also as a romantic illusion, that this power, this word can be “privatised”, can be possessed, can be written. We can trace this illusion in contemporary journalism that is striving to find “dark forces behind” certain events. We can find this illusion in naïve branding that strives to find one USP, one sentence, one characteristic that would give a brand it/s power. This naiveté lies in illusion that there is power that lies outside word, in an individual, company, state…
Contemporary western companies have disarmed themselves in overdeveloping Guttenberg invention. They disarmed themselves from the point in which human society found a comparative advantage to another species ten of thousands years ago. We are now failing in transmission of stories. Stories in books are creating illusions that they can be kept in books, that the power of stories lies in books, and that we are powerless without books and words in books. We have created tools and forget that that was only a tool. We have forgotten that the power of the word does not lie in the book but in the word. Humanity was “created” by the word as a memetic world. Here we find foundation of Robert Aunger/s deviation from Susan Blackmore. Aunger is locating memes in brains only (while Susan is conceptualising them in all artefacts). Aunger is right: mem is only potential that can be actualised in interaction. Frozen in a book or in some other artefact is only a tool that can wake brain waves – but those waves are going to be enacted only when they interact with their environment. Like we can say that electron exists only when it is measured. As it is told by royal art: the word can be told only in an interaction of two. The power of the word lies in the story, in an exchange in oscillation and not in frozen artefact.
If it is true that technologies, that enable faster replication of memes, develop it is true even more that the power stays there where it was from the very beginning. I can not cease to hope that we as PR theoreticians and practitioners are going to be credited in 2050 for wasting less energy in searching gods and devils and more in mature participation on the word.
