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Molecules, atoms and their elemental particles interact with each other through fundamental forces. These forces seem to permeate the whole universe. They form the fabric of space-time through which all things communicate. Society too needs an infrastructure through which all its members may communicate. Otherwise, society itself could not exist.
In a nomadic society, encounters between groups would take place in much the same way as they do between molecules in the atmosphere. However, in most human societies, most people live and work at fixed locations. This is true of our hythe-based society. Although the human life-form is naturally mobile, its emotional dependence on its immediate family, and its economic dependence on the land which supports them, tie it predominantly to a particular geographic location, namely its hythe.
For them to be considered a society at all, it is essential for people from different family units to have access to a communications infrastructure through which they may interact.
A hythe is a contiguous portion of the planetary surface which is used exclusively by the family which occupies it for their own economic gain. So it is natural, sensible and functionally sound that each family's hythe of land be privately owned by them. On the other hand, a communications infrastructure is there to enable any person based at any hythe in the world to communicate with any other person based at any other hythe in the world. This requires that every individual be free to use the whole of the global communications infrastructure. Its function is thus, by its very nature, common to all. So it is natural, sensible and functionally sound that it should be owned by all. There are thus two distinct classes of economic device:
The opposing political ideologies of today seem to insist on promoting either one extreme or the other. One asserts that everything must be privately owned. The other asserts that everything must be publicly owned. They seem to ignore completely the engineering view that any device - be it mechanical, electrical or social - should be run in the way which best lends itself to the nature and function of the device.
Again I acknowledge that the only perfect analogue of something is the thing itself. Nevertheless, I find it helpful to visualise these two classes of economic device as the two distinct classes of component which make up a modern telecommunications network, namely, nodes and links.
The nodes represent the privately owned socio-economic units - hythes. The links represent the commonly-owned infrastructure through which the hythes communicate. Notice that the links themselves join at nodes. This suggests that hythes have a role to play within the communication process, and that their owners have a public duty to carry out this role.
The most important way in which the human life-form communicates is undoubtedly through direct face-to-face conversation. This enables the communicator to use not only his voice, but also his facial expressions, his limbs, and demonstration aids. Thus he can use not only sound and sight, but also all the other human senses, as means of communication. Each sense adds a whole new dimension to the communication process. It thereby increases the depth and enhances the solidity of the message.
Furthermore, direct face-to-face communication is two-way. Each party can both give information and receive it. It's interactive. Each party can react or respond immediately to the other. Whether it be a conversation between two friends, an individual addressing a group, or a company of actors performing to an audience, face-to-face communication is the fastest, most information-rich form of communication possible between human beings. Nevertheless, although it be the most wide-band form of human communication, it can only take place over very short distances.
The fact that face-to-face communication can take place only when the parties concerned are within a few metres of each other is a very good thing. For a start, the human mind can only deal with one conversation at a time. The short range therefore cuts out all potential distraction and interference from all the other conversations taking place between other people throughout the world at the time. However, the greatest benefit provided by the short range of direct face-to-face communication is the ease with which one is able to control if, when and where he takes part.
If someone wishes to engage in idle conversation at any particular time, he goes to a place where he knows others will be who also wish to pass the time in conversation. If two people wish to discuss something, they arrange to meet at a mutually convenient time and place where they can discuss their matter in private. If a person feels the need for a period of solitude and thought, he retreats to a private place where others will not disturb him. He thus controls his communication with others simply by going to, or keeping away from, particular places. So, coupled with the human being's natural mobility, the physically restricted range of human conversation enables each individual unilaterally to determine and control his own personal mix of socialisation and solitude.
In order for human beings to be able to communicate, they must be able to travel. So if the planetary surface be essentially divided into privately owned hythes of land then a network of common ways of passage must be superimposed upon it. This is effected by the definition of ownership in regard to a hythe of land. Ownership of a hythe of land bestows upon its owner the exclusive right to use it for his economic gain. It does not give him the right to forbid anybody access to pass across it, camp on it overnight, or simply walk over it to study, admire or enjoy its beauty. A visitor, on the other hand, is obliged to respect the land and the owner's privacy and not to interfere with the owner's economic endeavours.
Human beings managed to travel the world perfectly well for thousands of years without paved roads. But this does not mean that paving is not beneficial. It makes travel smoother, and therefore, less fatiguing to the traveller and less wearing to his vehicle. It is also of benefit to the hythe owner in that it prevents through-traffic from churning up an ever wider swathe of ground in its attempt to follow an even route across his land.
It therefore makes sense for that 'network of common ways of passage' to be paved and maintained in good condition. Indeed, the same can be said of footpaths to allow the visitor access to walk the landscape. The question is, who should be responsible for maintaining the paved ways? Since the paving is used primarily by those who pass through, it seems reasonable that responsibility for the paving should be a collective one.
The purpose of travel is to communicate. But speed isolates a traveller. The faster he goes, the more isolated he becomes from the environment through which he passes. The faster he goes, the less he is able to learn about it or benefit from having passed through. Speed also alienates the traveller. The faster he goes, the more alien his route becomes to those who live nearby. The faster he goes, the more he splits the community through which he passes. Speed isolates and alienates the traveller from the resident. It thereby wastes and destroys what could otherwise have been a valuable opportunity for them to communicate.
Nature has had a long time and unlimited resources to come up with the optimum speed for creatures to transport themselves across the planet's surface. Apart from speeds in excess of 110 km/h reached in the heat of a chase, the normal maximum travelling speed for a land animal is about 60 km/h.
The narrow highly-networked roads of Hythe World should therefore be home to vehicles which encourage a cruising speed of around 60 km/h. They would be fuel-efficient. They would be spacious. They would be equipped with all which would be needed to allow a family to make long journeys independently of external en-route services. Their routes could be managed so that no link of the network could become over-burdened with traffic. Travellers would take all care not to harm the environment through which they pass or cause stress to those who live there.
Telecommunications
Throughout its history on this planet, the human life-form has often had the pressing need to communicate with others of its kind over distances far beyond the reach of its voice. Separated tribal groups needed to tell each other of new discoveries of water, pasture and herds of animals to hunt. They had to send warnings of approaching bad weather, predators or hostile armies. They needed to co-ordinate searches for lost children or animals, broadcast news of notable events and disseminate wisdom.
Though this communication was vital, the actual amount of information it needed to carry and the speed with which it had to be delivered, were both far less than normally took place in face-to-face conversation. The information itself was also more formally structured than it was in face-to-face conversation. Information in this form was known as a message.
Because of its nature, a face-to-face conversation requires a wide-band/ short-range means of delivery. This is provided by the human voice and ears, and is enhanced by facial expression, bodily gesture and the other human senses. Because of its different nature, a message needs a means of delivery with only a narrow bandwidth, but with a far greater range.
Being able to communicate over vast distances is one of the factors which has secured the human life-form's dominance of the planet. It has been so important that I would speculate that the oldest profession is not what most people think it is, but is in fact that of the messenger. The simplest way to convey a message over a distance is to dictate it to a messenger whose task it is to run to the person to whom the message is addressed and re-iterate the words which were spoken to him by the sender. An oral messenger can also make use of his facial expression and body gestures thus lending the full bandwidth of normal conversation to the conveying of the message. The only shortcoming over face-to-face conversation is the loss of direct interaction between the message's sender and receiver.
Messages sent by word of mouth aren't private. The messenger himself knows the message. The messenger may also forget, misunderstand or wrongly re-iterate all or part of what he was told. An oral message may not therefore arrive as it was sent. Both these problems are solved if the message is sent in written form under seal. Furthermore, its accuracy is maintained no matter how many hands it passes through en-route. This is the principle on which our present world wide mail service is based.
Nevertheless, the written message loses the greater bandwidth provided by vocal inflexion, facial expression and bodily gesture. It can therefore never be quite as accurate at conveying the full and precise intent of the sender. This is why it has been the eternal quest of telecommunications engineers to push the limits of range, bandwidth and network coverage forever upwards. Relentlessly accelerating towards the goal of plugging every human being on this planet into unlimited wide band contact with every other human being on the planet. But is this a good thing?
People need times of quietness as well as times of conversation. A telecommunications infrastructure must therefore be engineered so that it does not interfere with this natural requirement. It must therefore provide barriers to communication as well as links.
It is analogous to an electric circuit. In an electric circuit, insulators are just as important as conductors. Likewise, a telecommunications infrastructure must allow individuals the unpressured freedom to decide for themselves when to be available and when not to be available. It must let them decide just how available they are going to be at any time and to any particular person. In other words, each individual must be truly free to determine whether he is going to be available spontaneously through some wide-band interactive medium, or only through the relative privacy of posted mail.
Nature is always the best guide. So it would seem sensible to model an artificial telecommunications infrastructure on the same two-tier system with both wide band short range and narrow band long range services. This constricts the flow of information which can bombard the individual from afar yet allows the rapid exchange of information with neighbours. Given that the individual has mobility, he can thereby control when and with whom he engages in wide-band exchanges, while being accessible globally for short strategic exchanges of information and for hailing. He thereby determines his own personal mix of accessibility and isolation.
This is in harmony with nature. There are times when one can't venture far. Weather restricts safe long-distance travel. It thus imposes upon us times to meet and times to retreat. Likewise, changes in the ionosphere dictate when and with whom we may communicate by the narrow-band long-range medium of HF radio. It thus imposes upon us times to talk and times to reflect. This is good. On the other hand, we can converse with close neighbours whatever the weather. Likewise, the wide band short range capability of UHF is unaffected by ionospheric phenomena. It therefore allows fast, close-proximity exchanges any time. And the need for close proximity frees the individual from the stress of being expected to be constantly and unconditionally open to the world.
In a high-technology hythe-based society, therefore, every hythe would have a wide band short range link to adjacent hythes plus a long range narrow band facility for global access. The owner's vehicle would also be equipped with a wide band short range link. This would enable him to join a campus network temporarily upload local information from the places through which he travelled. It would also allow him to acquire specialised information by travelling to the proximity of its source, up-loading it and then returning home. A vehicular narrow band long range facility would allow him to exchange messages with his home base while he is 'on the road'.
A hythe may have a long range narrow band facility which uses HF radio. However, its main long range narrow band access to the world should be through a global network formed by the wide-band links between all adjacent hythes. In this scheme, each hythe-owner would have a public duty to accommodate and maintain some form of wide-band switch to route other people's narrow-band traffic onwards to its destination. All kinds of traffic could be sent via this long range narrow band network - eg: telephone conversations, audio/video and data files, and telemetry.
Any telecommunications infrastructure should naturally be able to carry public broadcasting as well as point-to-point communications between individuals. Public broadcasting can perform a useful purpose. It must be borne in mind, however, that broadcasting should never be put in the position of being able to supplant social contact. For example, theatre viewed on television can never be properly appreciated by one who has not acquired the necessary interpretive context from having seen it live.
Finally, it should be well noted that Hythe World is certainly not a return to a so-called idyllic past. It is a progression to an idyllic future. In this regard, the wide-band/long range communication made possible by modern technology does provide something new and beneficial. That is the possibility for individuals of like mind, in far removed parts of the world, to share their views and develop their thoughts together.
This would create what is called a small-world society - an instance of small-world network theory. But it must be used carefully. It must not be overdone. It must not pressure people to remain constantly plugged in to the future version of the Internet 24 hours a day. But used sensibly, it would be a valuable asset to human development.
To my mind, far from making the world smaller and more claustrophobic, this would place the individual in a far bigger world - geographically, socially and intellectually.
But the ultimate question still remains: Why would people want to communicate? The communications infrastructure may be there, but what would motivate the distributed economically self-sufficient people of this new world to actually use it? With the old forces of religious fear, political subjugation and corporate greed finally eradicated from the planet, what force will drive humanity to self-connect into an integrated society?