October 21, 2015 16.29
It's here, the future. The day Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown arrive at in the 1989 film "Back to the Future 2," which has become one of pop culture's most mythologized dates.
Inevitably, column inches are being written about the movie, and the predictions in it, right now. Not least about the technological innovations and social phenomena where the filmmakers actually got it right. But the really breathtaking thing, I think, is how wrong they were at the same time; that the reality we live in and have access to today is so much more advanced than we could ever imagine or dream of just 26 years ago.
The fact that the importance of the Internet - how hugely dependent we are on it to manage our daily lives and the extent to which we already take all its services for granted - is missed in the movie is thought-provoking. We have come a long way, in a historically very short time.
At the same time, not everyone is quite there. Or here. Getting to certain places, or certain social institutions, can now be a bit like traveling in time, but back rather than forward, without a time machine. The technological limitations on what we can do are no longer the major obstacles. Yet we are still far from taking full advantage of the opportunities offered by digitalization. Many people are still unconnected and thus partly excluded from society. Welfare, health and social care and a number of other essential functions are far from being as resource-efficient and user-friendly as they could be. In the Cabinet Office, they are still using pneumatic mail and faxes, I am told. But that's just a nasty rumor, of course.
What is very real, however, are three things that have come to light this week, and which, taken together, make rallying cries such as "the 20th century wants its politics back" unfortunately close to the mark:
1. the Green Party has commissioned a study of its future cultural policy, and proposes, among other things, that the infrastructure, broadband, which they themselves believe will better enable cultural dissemination should be taxed.
2. cassette tapes are still being played in the courts: the Solna District Court ruling the other day shows how outdated and obsolete the legislation and system on private copying has become.
3. On Thursday, a trial begins in which Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget are sued by, among others, the Swedish Film Industry, Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music, who claim that Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget should be judged complicit in crimes committed over the internet and block access to the sites The Pirate Bay and Swefilmer. A ruling in favor of the media companies would have major consequences for the Swedish model of a free and open internet: by extension, a heavily censored internet for Swedish users.
What we need now is not a silver DeLorean DMC-12 converted into a time machine. October 21, 2015 is no longer in the future. But it is high time to catch up with the present.