Emancipatory Utopias

It was not only the negative complaints regarding display monopoly, policing and surveillance activities that created public discord––the early modern offices were perhaps too utopian and therefore incited critique (Tantner 2015:78-79). In Renaudot’s Inventaire from 1631 he mentions how the lack of an address created hardship for poor artisans and others therefore he created housing and employment opportunities for the needy (ibid:268). Renaudot also provided addresses of doctors, surgeons and pharmacists who advised, treated and prepared cures for poor people for free (ibid:268). Moreover, Renaudot encouraged the dissemination of knowledge to

everyone and the bureau d’adresse meant joint property, or even worse, the ‘heresy of the Anabaptists’ (ibid:78-79).¹⁵ This is similar to the reputation of ‘the commons’, such as with the Tor Browser p2p collective that I will discuss in Chapter 11.

In 1633 Renaudot’s bureau d’adresse also realised a sort of ‘scientific academy’ where lectures were advertised, well attended, summarised and published in book form without the names of the lecturers. Renaudot intended that with this participation in knowledge exchange, courses from all disciplines should be taught except for politics and religion. The oracular function was also prevalent, documented by Renaudot’s ‘issues to be addressed’ (questions à résoudre) that encompassed everything and to which the bureau promised to provide answers (ibid:50).

Another example of their prophetic function was the ‘Inquiry and Information Comptoir’ from 1820 in Vienna, which was regarded as being capable of predicting the future. Tantner notes that it is frequently the case that with every new medium the impetus is to generate utopias of omniscience (ibid). Today this sounds vaguely familiar, as with the oracular reputation of Google and its promise to provide answers to all queries, even regarding politics and religion.

Allegedly it would also be able to supply information about the future and prediction products (see Chapters 9 and 10).

Samuel Hartlib was a refugee from Prussia and, as with other ‘office visionaries’ before him, was well aware of Montaigne’s essay along with the charter of Gorges and Cope (ibid:110-111).

One of his correspondents in Paris also delivered brochures about Renaudot’s bureau d’adresse, which inspired him to apply to open his London ‘Address Office’ (ibid:109). Hartlib’s notion of an office was even more comprehensive than his Parisian counterparts, in that it could fulfil all human needs and enable the execution of a ‘well-ordered society.’ Reminiscent of Google’s mission statement, it would include an educational institution that would be a gathering place for all available knowledge (ibid:111). He even went so far as to describe this as a ‘machine’

that would order all chaos and bring to light shortcomings of society (ibid:111-112).

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was well aware of his predecessors––and in 1675 envisioned an even more comprehensive establishment, including an ‘Office for Inventors’ whose works would be published in Semestria Literaria (ibid:148-150). He described a theatre of all things imaginable, which included a menagerie, a herb garden, a laboratory, an anatomical theatre, a cabinet of curiosities, concerts, art galleries, conversations and conferences. Leibniz also suggested a number of other facilities including a timbered house, a prison, a magazine or department store and a charity for the poor along with free medical service (ibid:150-151). Leibniz’s musings extended to an academy and in 1712/13 there was a scheme for the establishment of a bureau d’adresse, which would be used to finance the planned Imperial Society of Sciences. Intending to serve all of those with ingenious ideas, it would support scholars wishing to produce critical works who didn’t have publishers so that they could make a living and the general public could learn from their inventions.

With his ‘reimagining of search’ through the utopian conception of an office, Leibniz’s societal vision proposed the extraction of certainty out of chaos. Leibniz did not however wish to eliminate chance entirely–– rather he tried to fully integrate the process of information transfer into his plan. When consulting the register, ‘one often finds what one seeks yet one also

discovers other desires one hadn’t even thought of’ (ibid:152-153). Following in the footsteps of Renaudot (whose office he cited as inspiration), Leibniz described the good fortune of

15 However, Renaudot also offered authentication certificates for ideas or proposals (Tantner 2015:51).

‘serendipity’, before the word as it is known today even existed (ibid:153). The office then was not only an ‘Emancipatory Utopia’ but also a place where searches resulted in unexpected and fortuitous encounters, or serendipity, which I will discuss in Chapter 11.

None of these offices, with the exception of Renaudot’s, were realised yet there were

Emancipatory Utopias established that included art, music and books. Anonymity and discretion were also an integral part of these visions. In 1722 Anton Heinscheidt’s office in Frankfurt specifically mentioned that the journal ad should be placed anonymously and whoever wanted to know the name of an advertiser had to go to the office and pay four ‘kreutzer’, a unit of currency. In 1730 the book dealer Hans Jacob Lindinner opened an ‘Information Office’

(Berichthaus) in Zürich and published a ‘newspaper’, which offered assurances that customer privacy and secrecy would be respected (ibid:246). One is reminded of the Tor Browser that promotes secrecy and anonymity by hiding the user’s IP address or with contemporary VPN’s where one has to pay extra for privacy. In 1748 Siegmund Ehrenfried Richter established an

‘address office’ (Addreß-Comtoir) in Dresden that served not only the management of the advertising business but also the sale of goods and as a place of culture (Figure 10). In one room music lovers could test out the latest available sheet music for sale on the best Viennese

instruments, free of cost. In addition, domestic and international journals and reading books of all kinds would be available in an adjoining hall for locals and foreigners’ (ibid:235-236).

Figure 10. Siegmund Ehrenfried Richter’s ‘address office’ publication (1756).

These offices were Emancipatory Utopias in the minds of those seeking to organise the world’s information (Renaudot, Martin, Leibniz, a.o.) as research and academic institutions that

provided a model for the early development of search engines, before the era of Google (see Chapter 2).

The main motive of all projects was to consolidate communication, search for new and effective communication structures, and create institutions that would take over the collection, registration and distribution of existing information which then was available for everybody (Blome 2010:220).

In this way the offices fulfilled the functions of public libraries, museums, conservatories or today’s local cultural centres by bringing information to the public for free. These activities also resemble contemporary online p2p ‘networked’ distributed publishing of scholarly material as open access such as the Internet Archive (see Chapter 11).