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."

Comments

Or it could just be...

[0racle]

A series of buzzwords.

That's amazingly stupid.

[khasim]

From TFA:

The Post-Moderns concerned themselves with the demolition of power-relationships, authority-structures, even the architecture of language itself. The results have been decidedly mixed. The nihilism of The Bomb, the ethical bankruptcy of eugenics and similar traffics in human suffering are examples of its negative effects.

Wow. So nuclear science is "post-modern".

No. This is another is the series of crap articles which claim that X is "post modern" because saying so makes you sound cooler and more educated than everyone else.

Post-modernism cannot be defined except by saying what it is not. It is not modern; it is what came after the Enlightenment.

If you cannot define something, you do not understand it. But feel free to claim that technologies are "post modern" because it masks the fact that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Beside, when you get paid by the word, you really need something that you can pull a lot of words out of.

Summary and translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation:

The appearance of the "Web 2.0" jargon is a strong candidate for being the moment when the Internet jumped the shark.

Defining is not a prerequisite for understanding.

[ghastlygray]

If you cannot define something, you do not understand it. But feel free to claim that technologies are "post modern" because it masks the fact that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Although this maybe applies to TFA, I beg to differ on your general point. There are plenty of words and concepts which you understand and use perfectly but are incapable of "defining". Words like "Ethics", "Justice", "Religion" and "Morals" are important in our language and in our everyday behavior, but most would be pressed if asked to "define" them. The early Socratic dialogues of Plato (in which such a definition for such concepts was sought in vain) only illustrate this point. The same goes for almost any philosophical movement, not just postmodernism. It's hard to define what "Hegelianism" or even "Logical Positivism" is. The case of postmodernism is special only because its disciples say upfront that they shun any definition of their occupation. But again, this does not mean they do nothing, say nothing, or mean nothing. It may be the case that they do, but you are in no position to judge, just because they shunned a holy "definition".

On the other hand, I do know one thinker who would agree with your exact wordings of the demand for definition, and that would be Leibniz. His ideal was indeed that every concept would have an exact, almost mathematical definition. When in dispute, we would simply say "let us calculate", and resolve any conflicts by analyzing the definitions of concepts. Which could have simplified a lot of Slashdot. But even Leibniz was more pragmatic than that in real life, you know.