Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

CHAPTER NINE
Information and postmodernity
The subject of this chapter is at once thrillingly bold and disturbingly vague. It
is bold in that the prefix ‘post’ evokes the idea of a decisive break with the past
and the arrival of a new age. This notion is both appealing and interesting, not
least because announcements of postmodernism and postmodernity accord with
the views of others who argue we are entering a novel information society.
However, the subject is also disconcertingly vague, postmodernity/ism being
vexingly hard to define with clarity. The terms can appear to be less of a definition
than a series of descriptions and impressionistic suggestions (with repeated
pronouncements on ‘difference’, ‘discourses’, ‘irony’ and the like). Furthermore,
postmodernism/ity seems at once to be everywhere (in architecture, in academic
disciplines, in attitudes to the self) and, because the words are so imprecisely
used, impossible to pin down.
In a book such as this we need to explore this audacious yet vexing idea of
the postmodern, if only because it highlights the role of information in the ‘post’
world in two notable ways. First, postmodern thinkers place emphasis on information
(and communication) in characterising the new epoch. Second, leading
‘post’ writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Roland Barthes focus on information
in ways that are intriguingly different from other information-society authors.
They centre information neither in economic terms, nor from the point of view of
occupational shifts, nor from a concern with the flows of information across time
and space. Rather they stress information’s significance in terms of the spread
of symbols and signs. This concern is for the explosive growth and pervasive
presence of all forms of media, from video to cable, from advertising to fashion,
to interest in body shapes, tattoos and graffiti. As such it draws attention to
palpable features and particular qualities of life today, where we are surrounded
by, even submerged in, a sea of signs and symbols. The ‘post’ concern for such
matters is consonant with a great deal of information-society thinking and, as
such, merits further examination.
Accordingly, what I want to discuss in this chapter is the relations between
information and postmodernism. To this end I shall focus on the likes of Jean
Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard and Mark Poster, who pay particular attention
to the informational aspects of postmodernism. Preliminary to this, however,
I shall attempt to define postmodernism in reasonably straightforward terms –
no easy task in itself, since, as we shall see, it is hard to identify the essence of
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