Neo-Modernity
It occurs to me that we are currently seeing the birth of neo-modernism.
The Modern age (Modernism with a capital 'M') was characterised by a naive faith in machines and new methods/processes saving the world and improving life through progress, progress, progress. Post-Modernism came along after the atom bomb and ubiquitous plastic knicknacks had caused everyone a sinking feeling that modernity wasn't, after all, the solution to all our ills and was, in fact, causing ills of its own.
Now here we are in an age of a million new gadgets, mp3 players and bluetooth connectivity and all the rest.
Have we returned to the naivity of 'Thoroughly Modern Millie'? No, not really. Our new love of techno-gadgets has incorporated our knowledge of the negative side of these developments. We know genetic engineering could cause environmental devastation and we realise communities must learn to be sustainable into the future. We combine these realisations of danger with the love of the new and the love of the shock of the new. Therefore this is not a return to to old 'Modernism' but rather a birth of Neo-Modernism.
The Modern age (Modernism with a capital 'M') was characterised by a naive faith in machines and new methods/processes saving the world and improving life through progress, progress, progress. Post-Modernism came along after the atom bomb and ubiquitous plastic knicknacks had caused everyone a sinking feeling that modernity wasn't, after all, the solution to all our ills and was, in fact, causing ills of its own.
Now here we are in an age of a million new gadgets, mp3 players and bluetooth connectivity and all the rest.
Have we returned to the naivity of 'Thoroughly Modern Millie'? No, not really. Our new love of techno-gadgets has incorporated our knowledge of the negative side of these developments. We know genetic engineering could cause environmental devastation and we realise communities must learn to be sustainable into the future. We combine these realisations of danger with the love of the new and the love of the shock of the new. Therefore this is not a return to to old 'Modernism' but rather a birth of Neo-Modernism.
posted by Speculativism at October 24, 2009
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