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Is Web 2.0 the Advent of the Post-Modern Internet?
jg21 writes "Web 2.0 Journal has an essay on 'The Post-Modern Rhetoric of High Technology' in which the author contends that Web 2.0 is nothing less than 'the advent of the Post-Modern Internet. Will Web 2.0 be a revolution or a mere rebellion?" From the article: "Web 2.0 can take two distinct directions, and it is perhaps the rhetoric of it all that will define the path. Web 2.0 can be the French Revolution of Technology or it can be the American Revolution of Technology. Joseph Schumpeter's winds of creative destruction are blowing especially hard in the Internet technology world today, with remarkable improvements to our daily lives. But these winds can blow too hard too often, and an even older economic law, the Law of Diminishing Returns, begins to take over. Our wild-eyed radical phase must ultimately give way to some replacement. We cannot permanently be the rebels."
1) What is the author's take on the idea that critical distance and the potential for real objectivity are unattainable? This question can be seen at work in both Haraway's comments (see below) about what she sees as Jameson's main thesis on postmodernism, and in Laclau's mapping of an "analytic terrain" where the "given" is no longer a viable myth. Pejoratively put, this collapse of critical distance is decried as "aestheticist" or as aestheticizing ideology in many discussions (Norris). The usual implication is that the culprits are decadent, apolitical and dangerously irrational. The historical antecedents referred to are often Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde's "dandyism" and the "Art for Art's sake" movement. Whereas for many differently oriented commentators those same decriers of aestheticism are often themselves denounced as totalitarian rationalists, modernists, "mere" moralizers, reactionaries and unsophisticated know-nothings (Haraway; Giroux).
2) The terms postmodern, postmodernity and postmodernism can be seen to associate or conjure different meanings: the term postmodern is inclusively ambiguous of what people mean when they talk about issues that come up in discussions of postmodernity and postmodernism. Postmodernity is a sign for contemporary society, for the stage of technological and economic organization which our society has reached. Postmodernism then can be, as Eco says, a "spiritual" category rather than a discrete period in history; a "style" in the arts and in culture indebted to ironic and parodic pastiche as well as to a sense of history now seen less as a story of lineal progression and triumph than as a story of recurring cycles.
Analogously, and only for purposes of illustration, the condition of modernity is often spoken of as the rapid pace and texture of life in a society experienced as the result of the industrial revolution (Berman). However, modern_ism_ is a movement in culture and the arts usually identified as a period and style beginning with impressionism as a break with Realism in the fine arts and in literature. Prior to modernism one finds periods and styles associated with other distinct aesthetic movements, e.g., Romanticism and Realism. For instance, both Blake and Balzac, Romantic and Realist representatives respectively, could be said to have had some experience of modernity, to have lived during the early stages of the expansion of bourgeois or industrial capitalism and technology and science, whereas no one thinks of their respective arts or modes of expression as obviously "modernist."
Didn't we get rid of Jon Katz years ago? Who invited him back?
Post-Modernism has a perfectly clear definition that makes perfect sense. It is, however, too stupid for any words in any language, except maybe Klingon.
I have freaks! I did something right...
Someone thinks pretty highly of themselves and their place in the world.
News flash; Code and end user interfaces will always change.
The biggest news flash would be if they actually changed for the better.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It can't be a series of buzzwords, as neither "synergy" nor "paradigm" appeared.
Brett
From his bio
"Skinner Layne is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of NeXplore Technologies, Inc., a Web 2.0 Social Computing company based in Frisco, Texas."
See? He's the CSO of a company that he co-founded. A Web 2.0 Social Computing company, if you must know.
A Web 2.0 Social Computing company that doesn't have its web page listed in Google's search. Which only returns 24 hits anyway.
Does being paid $5 by Mom to babysit your younger brother count as a "first job"?
...have my secretary deconstruct the article and send me an executive summary of said deconstruction, so I can ignore it later.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Actually, the entire article was written just so you would read the summary and say that, as a demonstration of post-structuralist patterns of deterministic choice. Way to go, Captain Suggestable.
I have freaks! I did something right...
Web 2.0 can take two distinct directions [...]
Back button and forward button?
Upstream and downstream?
Bears and bulls?
I'm sorry, I give up: I can't figure out from the verbiage that follows that statement what those two directions are. Perhaps that particular kind of English major that this guy represents should not write about technology.
Internet 1.0: A series of tubes
Internet 2.0: A series of buzzwords
I may just be tired, but I first read your post as "buzzards."
In fluid processing industries, CSO is also a TLA for "car-sealed-open" (from old railroad car sealing technology; opposite is "car-sealed-closed", naturally) which refers to a valve which is locked in the open position, able to spew whatever content is in the pipes. Or tubes or trucks.