When with the assistance of its influential board of directors some national broadcasting company finally secures its charter, the following situation will arise. Phenomenal salaries will attract the most distinguished exponents of the various arts and sciences to the central broadcasting stations. District Colleges staffed by automatic invigilators will call the roll of students at the various lectures. These will be delivered by a loud speaker synchronized with a televisual cinema projecting the lecturer’s blackboard and other illustrative material.
The economy effected by conducting classes of say half a million or equally easily ten million students will enable anyone to follow courses by all the most distinguished exponents of his subject. European students in psychology, for example, will attend say at 9 a.m. for Professor Stout, followed at 10 by Dr Sigmund Freud, and at 11 by Professor G. E. Moore. Nor need these distinguished men repeat their lectures until they have something new to say, for dictaphones will be included among the listeners-in, and another relay of undergraduates will acquire their wisdom from the broadcast-phonograph.
Such a soulless business organization, it will be objected, could never replace our present establishments of culture. But here, again, I feel the objection is of purely transitory force. Progressive differentiation which I have mentioned as an important aspect of evolution has produced the antithesis of commerce and cultured life. Differentiation, however, is to a great extent counterbalanced by processes of integration; and such integration we can see in progress in the business world.
The commercial applications of art besides influencing the dividends of our railway companies must be exercising a cultural effect upon their boards of directors; and culture filters through in many ways. The justly renowned polish of the Oxford graduate is finding a lucrative field of expression in modern salesmanship. An up-to-date salesman now-a-days speaks considerably better English than his customer, and the average