By David Pinder, new member of MICE
Repost from https://davidpinder.substack.com/p/the-unavailable-familiar-source-of
“a reorientation of wishes, habits, ideas, goals.”
The above subhead – “a reorientation of wishes, habits, ideas, goals” – is the summary that American historian and sociologist Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) arrived at in 1934 to describe the human aspect of the Industrial Revolution. It hadn’t just been a mechanical shift, he concluded, but, rather, a fundamental mental and cultural upheaval.
So, what about the Digital Revolution? Is there more to it than, you know, screens and AIs and TikTok? You bet.
Engagement with those in our immediate vicinity is a core ingredient of human thriving. At least, it was up until recently. The family. The neighbours. The workplace. The town.
Arguably, now, however, those three-dimensional, fragrant or smelly, kissable or punchable bundles of life who are actually nearest to us are nowhere near as accessible as they once were. Why? Because we all spend more and more of our time elsewhere, in a parallel, hugely expanded universe where the screen image replaces the physical presence.
It’s a point Olaf Hermans and I found ourselves discussing just a few days ago. And the conclusion we reached was similar to that which Mr Mumford arrived at nearly a century ago. The question then, of course, is, “What can we all do about it?”
If the upheaval that follows a new technology, especially a new communications technology, comes less from its functional capabilities than from what it does in a local environment, how can we best respond to that?
Let’s nail down the issue.
In a digital world, the people we know stay familiar and physically near to us, but they become less available. Losing that nearby ground, and being confused by the unexpected loss, leaves us unanchored and open to other ideas that may be, wittingly or unwittingly, promoted.
There you are, in a nutshell that’s the Unavailable Familiar, a.k.a. The Hermans-Pinder Hypothesis.
The trigger
Every so often a new communications technology arrives and society loses its footing and becomes discombobulated. That word is chosen quite intentionally: according to Merriam-Webster, “discombobulated is an informal word that means confused, disoriented, or mixed up. When someone is discombobulated, they feel mentally scrambled, rattled, or unable to think clearly.” That’s a perfect description of the outcome of the Unavailable Familiar.
The introduction of the printing press was a classic instance of the phenomenon. The ability to create multiple, exact copies of texts was only part of the story. Arguably, of far greater import was “a reorientation of wishes, habits, ideas, goals”.
Underpinning all of it was the fact that the arrival of multiple copies of set-in-print texts resulted in radical reassessment of human worth …
Ancient and medieval people reserved their awe for memory. Their greatest geniuses they describe as people of superior memories, they boast unashamedly of their prowess in that faculty, and they regard it as a mark of superior moral character as well as intellect. (Carruthers, M.)
Who needs memory when you can have any number of exact copies of a text? And, of course, it all led, in time, to the arrival of an extraordinary selection of views – for example, the Quakers, the Diggers, the Levellers, the Seekers, the Ranters and more – and the English Civil Wars, as so accurately titled by Christopher Hill in his 1972 book, The World Turned Upside Down.
Digitalization has done the same, hasn’t it? Led to the culture wars, polarization and a rush of new propositions about identity, nature and fundamental truth, that is. All of which is down, primarily, to the Discombobulation of the Unavailable Familiar.
Systems theory offers an account of why. Niklas Luhmann, and after him Dirk Baecker, argue that each new medium floods society with more meaning than its existing structures can absorb, until new structures emerge. That explains why something must give. It doesn’t explain how the strain reaches individual people, or why so many of them grab at ideas that would once have seemed outlandish to them.
The Unavailable Familiar hypothesis offers an answer at the level of everyday life: the street, the office, the family table.
The hypothesis
The hypothesis rests on five propositions, each building on the one before.
- Grounding. People maintain equilibrium through the familiar milieu near them: family, neighbours, colleagues. Being able to reach those people, more than the bare fact of the relationship, is what keeps them mentally stable.
- Displacement. A new communications technology redirects time, attention and presence. Familiar people may stay near and well disposed, yet become harder to reach, and once-commonplace gatherings fail to happen. Nobody is against meeting, but things simply don’t come together.
- Discombobulation. Existing relationships still nominally exist. The familiar is still familiar. The problem, however, is that it is no longer available. This gives rise to mental confusion. “How is it that people are here but not here?”
- Exposure. Without nearby ground, people are “exposed to the elements”. A common reflex is to be attracted (or distracted?) to seek out ground in ideas and belief communities that are distant but always available. The same technology that made the near unavailable makes the far ever-present.
- Locus. So the root of the upheaval is local, even when its content looks global. The particular beliefs people take up matter less than the vacuum that lets them in.
In fact, the propositions probably describe a loop rather than a single chain. Ready availability pulls people further into distant attachments. That makes them less available to the people near them, which deepens everyone else’s displacement. The technology starts the loop – the loop is then self-sustaining.
Neighbouring work, and what is distinctive
Most writers in this territory describe the loss or decline of community. This hypothesis claims something odder: the familiar has not gone, it has merely become unavailable.
Jenkins deserves particular attention. On her account, paid professionals such as therapists and coaches increasingly stand in for close relationships. That fits proposition 4: the nearby familiar gets replaced by something more distant that is always on call.
Testing it
If the hypothesis is right, local availability should predict upheaval better than how widely the technology has spread. That gives predictions anyone can check.
- Places. At the same level of technology adoption, communities with strong local institutions should hold steadier. Examples are dense parishes, working clubs, and workplaces where people still turn up.
- People. People who report “Where is everybody?” experiences should be more open to new belief systems than equally connected people who do not.
- Sequence. In a given community, a drop in face-to-face availability should come before ideological capture, not merely accompany it. This might explain, for example, the reduction in ‘third places’ noted by Ray Oldenburg and commented on by Christopher Lasch.
- Remedies. Measures that restore local availability, rather than measures that correct beliefs, should reduce susceptibility.
Implications
If the cause is local, so is the remedy: deliberately make the familiar available again. Arguing people out of their new beliefs treats the symptom. Restoring nearby ground treats the cause.
Room 25 is one example of that remedy – a concept developed by Olaf Hermans. An initial Room 25 event will take place in Mechelen, Belgium in December when 200 local people will come together to help address one another’s concerns. Intriguingly, the attendees are chosen because they are “no different” from anyone else. In the hypothesis’s terms, it creates an afternoon of available familiarity, among strangers who become familiar.
There are also customer-value issues, a matter close to my heart. For example, many organizations have replaced the familiar person, such as the branch manager, the local agent or the regular contact, with channels that are always on but never close. The hypothesis predicts that some customers may experience this as … er … discombobulating, which will not normally be a positive feature in a value proposition.
Nothing is impossible
I began with a line from Lewis Mumford and it seems appropriate to conclude with yet another. Mumford sums up his thinking by reference to a musical metaphor. He asks his readers to think of our technological progress as the build-up of an orchestra.
What shall we say of the music that has so far been produced? Looking backward on the history of modern technics, one notes from the tenth century onward the instruments have been scraping and tuning, One by one, before the lights were up, new members had joined the orchestra, and were straining to read the score.
And he continues through time until his present, the 1930s, and asks:
Have we heard the complete work? Far from it. All that has happened up to now has been little more than a rehearsal … we will have to re-write the music in the act of playing it, and change the leader and re-group the orchestra at the very moment that we are re-casting the most important passage Impossible? No: for however far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.
Hmm, perhaps our greatest concern should be for all of us to stay sane while we are achieving the impossible?
References
- Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism.
- Baecker, D. (2007). Studien zur nächsten Gesellschaft.
- Carruthers, M. (1990). The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture.
- Hill, C. (1972). The World Turned Upside-Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.
- Jenkins, T. (2025). Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life.
- Kornhauser, W. (1959). The Politics of Mass Society.
- Lasch, C. (1995). The Revolt of the Elites: and The Betrayal of Democracy.
- Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft.
- Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior.
- Mumford, L. (1934). Technics and Civilization.
- Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling Alone.
- Source conversation: David Pinder and Olaf Hermans, 30 October 2026.
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Neville Buch
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