Leslie Budd on... old versus new

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When Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World was first published, it was seen as a horrific version of the future in which technology determined human existence. In the last thirty years, business seems to have become the brave new world so that the book now seems like a cautionary tale of our times. We live in an age where everything that is new is embraced, whether it’s technologies or products, but we forget the old at our peril. For example, electricity and immunisation against diseases has been with us for centuries. In the 19th century, Karl Marx celebrated the chemical and electrical engineering industries in the same way that Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple celebrate the digital technologies of the day.

So what is different? Let’s look at lobbying. Lobbying is seen to be the contemporary evil of business and societies by many people. Yet lobbying is a bit like corruption, it can lubricate the wheels of commerce or generate grit, which damages the engine of business. Lobbying has a long history. In the past, it was called petitioning. In the modern world, companies, governments and media are lobbied, whilst in the past it was courts, guilds and kings that were petitioned. But much of lobbying and petitioning is not visible as its practitioners seek to influence or change public debates and their outcomes. In our rush to experience the new, we forget the stimulus of the old whether it’s technologies or products. As in the case of lobbying and petitioning, the bottom line is that the dance of continuity and change in business and society is one that we all take part in however passionately or shyly.

That’s my view. You can join the debate with The Open University.