Postmodernism…yes again!
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While looking for something else, I came across this chart a few days ago. It’s a theme I’m very fond of and this chart was a bit of a breakthrough for me. I used it in a briefing and found that it was really only a breakthrough for me. I’m putting it up here under a creative commons license in the desperate and vain hope that someone else appreciates it and decides to use it in their work.
I love this because it is yet another model for describing the changes that we are seeing in culture (YAMFDCC). The 1950s were the apex of modernism, the pinnacle of the era begun by Frederick Winslow Taylor in defining the industrial age. The primary tenet of this period was the One Best Way. The most efficient way to do whatever. My favourite story of this period is that Frank Lloyd Wright would often “visit” houses of former clients, unannounced and several years after he had finished, to see that the furniture hadn’t been moved from its original (and of course optimal) position.
Naturally, people quickly found this very tiresome and so the late 50s through to the late 60s were a period of revolt and deconstruction. It was a period where we tore down the idea of the One Best Way and shattered it into tiny little pieces.
The post modern movement was born. These little pieces were reassembled and remixed and re-contextualised to create ironic statements. To me, one of the defining themes of early postmodernism was that it was entirely backward looking. The statements that were being made were statements about the past.
At some point, this changed.
The postmodern technique continued but instead of creating statements about the past, it was used to create visions of the future. The fused, remixed forms we see across culture today are entirely forward looking. This led me to an hypothesis:
It’s one I still believe in and, in fact, have placed $50 in a wager on Longbets.org.
Anyone care to take me up on the bet?