Society
Our speaker ignored the social impact of the net and focused on shopping on the Tesco website
Published 09 August 1999
My own feeling was that the stifling weather and the rather modest status of the speaker would keep the numbers down, so it was heartening to walk into the upstairs function room at the Marquis of Cornwallis last Monday and discover more than a dozen people already assembled for the first meeting of the Telos Club. It looked as though our initially self-conscious attempt to create a forum for debate in the east Bloomsbury area had become a reality.
In my opening remarks I explained that the Telos Club had been created in response to a growing feeling among intelligent people that there was no place to debate the issues of the day. "This club," I announced, "is the antidote to all those superficial dinner parties and social evenings where the topic of conversation rarely rises above the latest changes in house prices and the best number to ring to secure a mind-numbing wrap of good cocaine." (That got a nice, sympathetic chuckle from the man with the Becks and the large notebook in the corner.)
I then pointed out that we would be meeting every month and introduced tonight's speaker. Nick Havering, I explained, was currently a freelance IT consultant but had worked for nearly a decade as an assistant systems engineer at IBM. We owed him a special debt of gratitude as he had stepped in at short notice, immediately after Will Hutton discovered he had more important matters to attend to on Monday evenings.
We'd described Havering's talk in our circular as a "critical look at the impact of the Internet on social and personal life in the new millennium". Even in that form it was hardly a very tantalising topic. But, if Havering had stuck to his brief, we might have generated a mildly interesting discussion. As it was, he chose to ignore the substantial analytic issues that derive from the alienating consequences of substituting electronic for face-to-face communication and concentrated wholly on his own experiences of shopping for groceries on the Tesco website.
Only three people left during his address, and there was quite a flurry of hands at the end when I asked for comments. A woman near the bar told us in detail about the difficulties she'd had on the Tesco site when she'd tried to buy her preferred size of packet of chocolate digestives, and there was something approaching a spirited exchange when a man who introduced himself as an untenured lecturer in geography at South Bank University insisted, against the majority opinion, that Barnes and Noble provided a better deal on books than Amazon.com.
After I'd formally thanked Havering, I tried to retrieve the situation by subtly suggesting that this first meeting had been mainly about getting together: future occasions would be more thought-provoking. We were, for example, hoping to secure the services of Charles Leadbeater for a debate on reviving the public sector, and there was a strong possibility that our local MP, Frank Dobson, might find time before Christmas to talk about the future of the NHS.
As we drifted away, I noticed the man with the Becks and the notebook coming in my direction.
"Thanks so much for that," he said. "I couldn't help but catch your deliciously sarcastic reference to those absurd parties where people spend the entire evening talking about the best number to ring for mind- numbing cocaine. Look, don't in any way take this as a comment on the evening" - he paused and opened his notebook - "but I wondered if, by any chance, you happened to have one of those numbers on you at the moment."
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
