For many years I avoided reading newspapers. When the TV broke down I did not bother to get a new one. My frustration at not being able to grasp the entirety of what was going on in the world had become too great. I preferred to read a well-written story rather than hundreds of rapidly written news flashes. I want to purify my dreams from images of the world’s catastrophes. Yet the media’s interpretation of the world still crept up on me. I could not avoid seeing the billboards as I walked the streets; nor could I avoid hearing conversations that referred to constantly new news. Have you heard the latest? Did you know that: Unemployment is increasing; New technological revolution in the economy; Bangladesh is hit by catastrophe; Bugging brought down a gang leader; Several countries at war; Paedophile rapes six-year-old.

My reality is made up of such simple headlines. Of simplifications in history books and the rapid sensations of the newsmedia. I do not trust this construction which I never have time to analyze. But it is the only picture of the world that I possess. Beyond it, the world is almost empty. I see only streets and houses, people passing. The weight of my body and my breathing. Not much actually happens in my physical proximity. Everything happens somewhere else. When I sometimes travel there, somewhere else, in order to find out what is hiding behind the headlines, it is just the same. Streets and buildings and people passing on the subway. The sweat of my body. Sometimes I see portrayals of what has been happening, in the newspapers or on TV: Gas attack in the subway; Heat record for July. Evidence that it was not a dream.

The world is still somewhere else, but over the years I have learnt to create proof of its existence. How one makes the dreams real. The people living in this reality have a simple message and take part in clearly defined conflicts. The dramaturgy is simple. In order to produce the level of conflict that makes even everyday banalities news, strong characters and evident opposites are required. One event is followed up by another. Continued in the next issue. This ongoing media drama always contains a part for the good guy, the bad guy, the jester and the wise person. People who know the rules can take part. If the drama is well directed the result is usually visible on the papers’ billboards. In the best case the event finds its way into people’s subconscious and colours their dreams.

In the USA, the Mecca of PR consultants, a cross-section of the populace believes that 100 000 Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War in spite of the official total of 2 million. They also believe in God and democracy. In Sweden we have been taught that all people are equal and most of us believe what is said on the news. What is said is often true. It is true that just this has been said and not something else. It is almost always true that someone profits from its being said at that time. In the expanding PR field they know how to promote their customers’ views and products in the right way in the media. In the increasing information buzz these services are increasingly requested. The information buzz is the alibi of communications experts, but it is also their weapon. No one has time to reflect. The message is widely accepted. The customers pay well.

PR oils the wheels of the new industry in which goods have been replaced by brand names. In this industry, in which a malicious rumour is the most serious threat, a media spokesperson is a guarantee of success. With a carefully thought-out communications strategy one can reach new markets or grow in a saturated one.

There were many of us in the spring of 1998 who suddenly started feeling filthier than usual and started worrying about household dust gathering beneath the settee. Articles about Swedes’ hygiene appeared in the media telling us how often young men change their sheets and that modern households, because of mothers working outsde the home, are fertile ground for diverse insects. That it was Colgate-Palmolive that had commissioned the report from Temo was not apparent. When the Swedish people reacted by demanding more hygiene products, the company was well prepared with their warehouses filled and with advertising campaigns for specialized products.

In a similar fashion in the autumn of 1998 the Swedish telecommunications company Telia created a new demand for telephone services. The media were presented with a study by Sifo of how companies included on the Stockholm Stock Exchange’s A list tended their relations with shareholders. They had tested how readily one could contact the companies using telephone, fax, e-mail and the Internet and the results were dismal. This led to headlines in the influential business daily Dagens Industri, for example, well timed for an advertising campaign explaining how Telia can help companies to improve their communications.

Free advertisements in the form of editorial space in the prestigious dailies is worth large sums. Swedes still have faith in what is said in the press. Journalists are still widely considered to be objective. So these articles affect us all the more. As opposed to advertising as such about which people are much more critical.

Even elected politicians need skilled PR strategists. Democracy is a complex process. It is represented by a few chosen people, chosen not to make overly hasty decisions. Paid to give consideration to all the facts and not merely those that suit the media’s news drama. At the same time there is a continual fight for voters and no politician with a feeling for survival dares to go against the general opinion. The views of the populace are constantly being measured and decision-making power goes to those who can influence their views.

Lobbying does not only take place in the corridors of power but equally in the media. Clever marketing is required for influencing decisions. The Stockholm City Council has understood this and now uses the tax-payers’ money to pay PR consultants. This spring the consultants saved the city the sum of SEK 250 million by changing the government’s proposal for tax equalization. The idea behind the Robin Hood tax, as the proposal was known, was that the tax burden should be shared more equally so that rich municipalities like Stockholm should pay more than poor municipalities.

A skilful PR campaign changed the Robin Hood tax into a punitive tax in the media headlines. In a poll of famous people, numerous well-known Stockholmers were persuaded to speak out against the proposed legislation and the newspapers eagerly cabled out the news which had everything necessary for forceful headlines: The little municipality versus the mighty government, individual financial situation, local ties and famous people. Thanks to this ‘popular storm’ the government proposal was altered.

In the 19th century Russia of the Czarist democracy was still in its cradle. But the period in which modern democracy would develop was on its way. Nicolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls is set in this period of radical change between the old feudal society and the new industrialized society. The hero of the novel, Pavel Chichikov, is not a striking personality, but with his modest behaviour and his phenomenal ability to adjust he can persuade everyone around him to feel that they have met a like-minded friend. He rapidly establishes a network of contacts in the city of Russian government which is his chosen operational base. His plan is as simple as it is grand. In feudal Russian society serfs were counted once a year and one paid tax for this number of serfs for the rest of the year. But people are an unreliable sort of capital: they can run away, get ill or even die. If this happened just after the census the landowner was still obliged to pay tax for the dead serf for the rest of the year. It is the serfs that Chichikov is interested in as merchandise and the surprised landowners are only too pleased to give their dead serfs to this modern entrepreneur who, on paper, becomes a rich man, the owner of numerous souls.

Today there are more creative entrepreneurs and the struggle for souls is harder.

‘The product being manufactured is you’ as Adbusters say in their anti-advertising directed at consumer society. This product is something that the loyalty experts in the field of IT know how to create. In the increasing information buzz it becomes increasingly expensive to reach a target consumer group with specific information. Greater knowledge of the group is the power that is sought. Loyal consumers are the goal. This is not something that they keep quiet about and in the marketing periodical Resumé the managing director of Joblines boasts of his winning concept. This web-based employment agency working in the field of IT is not primarily concerned with the provision of competent people. What the highly educated job-seekers create by submitting their CVs and their dreams of the future to Joblines’ data base is not just contacts with new employers. Joblines also acquires a data base with detailed information about an attractive target group.

The development of new information technologies is rapid and the trends are clear. At a time when Camel is no longer cigarettes but a life style one does not need a range of products to start a shop; the visitors themselves suffice. In Sweden broad-based market places such as Torget compete with interactive services such as the chat-line Dobedo for visitors. The value of these Internet societies grows with the number of inhabitants that one can show that one has. The actual value of this game of Monopoly is difficult to determine but that it is reckoned in the thousands of millions of Swedish kronor is something that stockbrokers can confirm despite the fact that there are as yet no real profits to speak of. The target is the future when attractive details about people will be a driving force in the new economy.

In the new reality dreams are hard currency. What are you experiencing, my friend, what impulses control you? What signals trigger your impulses? In the hectic commerce on the Internet, new, free services and offers are constantly appearing for people willing to register as ‘members’. Everything is possible if one is willing to divulge who one is, who one would like to be and what one most wants from life. One can even get paid for all this, as at AllAdvantages.com that pays you for exposing yourself to advertising in parallel with the other junk on the Internet. With the help of a small programme you receive personally tailored advertising while it simultaneously registers your viewing habits on the Internet. Probably this information can be sold elsewhere for a much higher price than has been paid to you.

The Orwellian control society that was threatened when the computer first established itself in the universal consciousness is something that one no longer talks about. Rather it is freedom as a value that skilled marketing strategists stress today. Freedom of choice in the matter of consumption.

Freedom of expression will be all the more difficult to maintain when all our actions and views can be effectively mapped. This is something that the Italian municipality of Bologna has taken account of in constructing Internet services for its inhabitants. In this native country of the Mafia they are well aware of what can happen to freedom of expression when the market rules. To encourage the inhabitants to express their views without risk of reprisals from neighbours who have different views they have tried out a new idea. The municipality supplies Internet services that allow inhabitants to read and create information using a pseudonym.

But in many parts of the world it is rather the danger of free publicity than the right to it that is stressed. In Russia, where the uncensored flow of information via the Internet meant much to the march of democracy the authorities are now doing their best to control this. By forbidding encoding and by organized control of e-mail they are trying to combat crime. For the same reason the USA is attempting to limit the use of encoding while at the same time wanting more powerful statutes for censoring the Internet. In Sweden the right to uncensored public debate has been effectively silenced by the coupling to the spread of child pornography on the Internet.

One does not need to be of a conspiratorial disposition to ask oneself who gains by this. It is enough to have read William Gibson’s novel Iduro. In this scenario of the future, that increasingly resembles the present, the world has been transformed into a place of total surveillance. People’s patterns of consumption are analyzed by information brokers with a capacity for reading the future and it is TV shop hostesses who govern the planet with the help of hordes of information manipulators.

In a different science fiction scenario people have learnt to dream collective dreams. In Jeff Noon’s Vurt this collective drug has reduced part of the population to a state of apathy. Society is in an advanced state of dissolution in which dream addicts spend all their time coupled to the collective imagination instead of attending to their societal duties. In order to save the origin of its existence the dream finally takes over and starts actively to change the reality which originally created it.

We live today in a collective dream. A dream that creates meaning and that has given us our history. We have always lived here and time stands still. A dream of the pharaohs runs parallel with the Second World War and in another dream refugees from the bombed wastes of Kosovo wander aimlessly about. I make an effort to dream good dreams. One never knows: perhaps I can influence what is going on somewhere else, in what we call reality.

Translation William Jewson