Anthony Giddens: The Consequences of Modernity

Downsides of modernity 1. environmental destruction 2. Increased military power 3. Increased totalitarianism in form of transnational corporations (having been long replaced the nation states) 4. Degrading work (think repetitive work and deskilling) information society and information as such can not be divorced from the consumer context. Do we not have enough information? No, too much information is always the problem We have 1000 trademark tools that do essentially the same jobs Why put the format onto automatic and work it into the lower brain, basal ganglia, when you can constantly exhaust limited high brain functioning getting used to hot, exciting new features! New features that are scarcely an improvement on the good enough for government work features of yore. Are postmodernism and postindustrialism same terms? Lyotard coined the non-retarded term postmodernism Here's an epistemology sandwich to start a jaunty morning first came the bun on the bottom, Nature, holding the whole thing up (The Natural World with it's infinite psychedelic experiences) Next came, the fake meat of God in the middle, the meat was necessary when nature died out and agriculture replaced the HG's. (religion, that substitute for real experiences in the natural world, the spiritual sense is the lost immediacy of everyday survival in the jaws of death, with a million fantastical experiences, ever-changing, ever-delighting) On the top, the latest bun, is the bun of Technology Yes, so all we are eating today is the top bun of tech. No more natural world, no more God. Just Google. Google and a Search. As Nietzsche would say, "I guess some things come full circle, eh my friends?) Modernity is a historical epoch that goes hand in glove with the historical epoch of capitalism. We can split the hairs all day long, but for all intents and P, the damn thing arises pert near 17th century, give or take some scholarly wheel-spinning. PM is the feeling of being swept up in a world that we do not fully understand. Exempli Gratis: 1. I just ate a sandwich made in Japan. 2. I just switched on the lights! PM is the experience of irony everywhere. The rapidity of change under PM is flabbergasting. (While writing this, I just updated my software, and began squatting digitally in cyberspace) Lately we seem to have lost our belief in progress (9) Didn't Blake say it in the 18th century in "The Human Abstract" so beautifully. Blake in one poem raised and answered the questions of so much data and scholarly tome. Society is an ambiguous notion. Referring to some vague associations of people (12) and suddenly this epiphany: "we can use hx to make hx!" (15) Was not this/that the real eureka of Marx? Along with the recipe for the ingredients of exploitation. Marx said and I paraphrase liberally here: "Making salsa in Spanish is the same as salsa in French" The names are different, but the ingredients, the essence will stay the same, be it plebian or some official workers" If modernity began in conjunction with the mechanical clock, than the PM era begins when the cell phone becomes a much more effective mechanical clock. Cell phones are clocks on steroids. Here's one for an art installation You or Me (but better you than me) in a prison with the name of your carrier on the walls Now pray tell, how many bars is your 3G picking up, eh my friends? Giddens says that under modernity and becoming worse under PM, locals become shaped by beliefs that come from far away. "I live in Silicon Valley and I give two shits about what the NYT says is transpiring in NYC?" HG's didn't care about distant events, but we are made to believe we should. Nevertheless, dominant cultures colonize the lifeworld (Lieberwelt) of other cultures Giddens fancy (I'm worth my salary!) term for this phenomenon is "phantasmagoric" (19) This "phantasmagoric" tendency is a real thing and a real problem, but do we really need such a fancy word for it?