It’s not all Twitter mobs – the internet can be a force for good

Few readerships of any intelligent national magazine will be more alive to the perils and downsides of 21st–century cyber-life than you, fellow Spectator readers. Many of you might share my use of the generalised expression ‘the internet’ for the whole damn thing — while not being quite sure what we’re referring to.

Few, on the other hand, will be more likely to show a lively appreciation of community, locality, the sense of belonging and of place that even in this fast-paced and mobile age, our country at its best can still nurture.

You might think those two dispositions make comfortable bedfellows. The faithful little band of stalwarts at Evensong, the public–spirited pensioner out on the lane collecting litter, the retired major logging each developing pothole… these are not people you would expect to want to know much about Snapchat, or how to link Spotify, their smartphone and their domestic sound systems to bring them highlights from Iolanthe at breakfast.

Now in respect of age you might be right. Older people tend to be more rooted, ‘somewheres’ rather than ‘nowheres’. And because the internet age arrived later in their lives, they’re more likely to feel baffled by it. That, we must grant.

But will it be so in 30 years? Is there anything inherently citizens-of-nowhere about people on easy terms with cyberspace? Must people whose lives revolve in small orbits around the little suns of village, town and region be digitally challenged?

I think the answer is no, and that as a generation that grew up with the internet settles down, grows roots and notes its own wrinkles, it will be more and more alive to the possibilities of cyber-communication as a tool of, in the very best sense, parochial concerns.