network culture chart

Fredric Jameson’s classic description of Postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism is now well over twenty years old. Jameson’s analysis is crucial for understanding late twentieth century thinking, but in the intervening years, culture has changed radically. As part of my Networked Publics fellowship at the Annenberg Center for Communication, I am preparing a series of documents about the cultural dominant that succeeds postmodernism. This material was developed over the last four years with new media architecture collaborative AUDC. Instead of a theoretical piece, I’ll open this discussion with a table outlining some empirical observations about this new condition which we can term "Network Culture," or perhaps "Transcontemporaneity."

Fredric Jameson’s classic description of Postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism is now well over twenty years old. Jameson’s analysis is crucial for understanding late twentieth century thinking, but in the intervening years, culture has changed radically. As part of my Networked Publics fellowship at the Annenberg Center for Communication, I am preparing a series of documents about the cultural dominant that succeeds postmodernism. This material was developed over the last four years with new media architecture collaborative AUDC. Instead of a theoretical piece, I’ll open this discussion with a table outlining some empirical observations about this new condition which we can term "Network Culture," or perhaps "Transcontemporaneity."

 ModernismPostmodernismNetwork Culture
Political Economy
economyproductionservicedebt
capitalmonopolymultinationaltransnational
regime of accumulationFordismPost-FordismEmpire
forms of consumptionscarcityaffluenceluxury and clustering
enemyrevolutionary communismsoviet communismislamic terrorism
Culture
settlementsuburbiapostsuburbiaexurbia
spaceabstracthyperspacenetwork space
subjectivityautonomousschizophrenic/fragementedsubsumed into the object
mediamass medianichelong tail
dominant mode of artrupturecritical appropriationsmooth aggregates
authorshipauthordiscursive fieldnetwork
narrativesHegelian narrativesend of the grand narrativeneo-Hegelianism
musicrecordscassette tape, compact discfile sharing or itunes
portable musictransistor radiocassette walkmanipod
sci-fi fantasymetropolisstar warsthe matrix
past referenceantiquity19th c.-1930s modernism1960s contemporaneity
diseaseTBAIDSEbola, Anthrax, Avian Flu
warWorld War I, IIVietnam9/11
computingmainframepersonal computerubiquitous computing
screen-based mediaTelevisionGUIWeb 2.0
urban détournementthe dériveskateboardingle parkour
Representative Figures
psychologyFreudLacanZizek
philosophySartre/Heidegger/WittgensteinDerridaDeleuze
architectureLe Corbusier/MiesVenturi/EisenmanGehry/Koolhaas

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