You know we’re in trouble when people start comparing the Web 2.0 trend to postmodernism. In my general experience, it’s a sure sign that the conversation is about to disappear up its own backside. However, praise is due to Dr Paddy Byers who very cleverly teased out some of the links in a piece he wrote last week.
Generally speaking, postmodernists deny the validity of claims to objectivity, the power of reason and what they call grand narratives. Grand Narratives are the stories we use to structure our lives. We also find the idea that the media creates our reality, that there’s no originality left, only copies of what there’s been before.
It’s a little bit flippant, but if that isn’t a description of much of the blogosphere, I don’t know what is. The idea that each of us can become a publisher. That every individual blogger’s thoughts have equal weight and validity. “We, the media”. And some postmodern ideas also seem an apt description of the continual annotation and comment on each other’s ideas — like this post. You might also think about things like digg and RSS — where the reader is also editor.
More seriously, Dr Byers notes that some parts of what we call Web 2.0 are better described as belonging to an alternative and very different ideology, collectivism. Collectivists can potentially believe lots of things, but we’re talking about the idea of an “emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity” (Merriam Webster). This would cover things like social bookmarking, networks and projects that depend on collective intelligence — be that a collection of people, machines or databases.
There’s a handy list:
Harnessing collective intelligence: collectivism
Data is the next Intel inside: collectivism
Meeting the needs of the long tail: postmodernism
Postcasting, narrowcasting: postmodernism
The perpetual beta: (arguably) postmodernism
Why does any of this matter? Who cares if it’s postmodern or not? In many ways it doesn’t matter. People will keep trying things — some will stick and some won’t. It only matters when we try to ask “what would be the web 2.0 approach to X?” Because it’s formed from two competing ideologies, you might end up with two very different, equally valid, answers. But that still doesn’t matter, you might say. Try them both and see which one works. That would be the postmodern answer, I guess. If you were a collectivist, we’d probably have a vote.
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Hmmm. really good stuff, Ian. I admit I don’t really like Postmodernism but I do like some of what it represents. And I agree, bits of Web 2.0 are clearly part of a PM world.
You ask what does it matter…? Well, for the most part it emans little to users, but those affected by the impact of web 2.0 it might mean a bit more.
I posted over at Simonsays… (http://simoncollister.typepad.com/simonsays/2006/04/could_media_fra.html) about the way media establishments could have predicted fragmentation. Post-Structuralists (groan) were talking about the way ‘grand narratives’ were breaking down left, right and centre back in the late 60s.
Although their work was mainly in the fields of politics, literature and social science, academics were quite clear their ideas applied to all areas of human activity. Ifd forward thinking emdia moguls had paid attention to work by the likes of Derrida then, they could have been ahead of the game now!
Cheers, Simon. Derrida scarred me too much when I was at university to investigate this theme a lot further. Really liked the comment on your blog about employing anthropologists as publishing consultants!
Glad you liked my post — good to see at least someone understood what I was trying to say :) I haven’t been here before but your book looks interesting. Good luck!
Thank you, Paddy. More of a gloss on your post than anything else, I fear. The book is becoming a bigger job every time I talk to a new person (or read an especially insightful post, like yours). Expect a re-re-revised table of contents soon!