Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND POSTMODERNITY
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‘information retrieval’ will displace traditional conceptions of knowledge (and
student profiles will certify that these and other competencies have at least equivalent
recognition to more orthodox academic attainments) as ‘[d]ata banks
[become] the Encyclopaedia of tomorrow’ (Lyotard, 1993, p. 51).
Moreover, databanks and the competencies to use them further undermine
the truth claims of traditional elites. Indeed, they announce ‘the knell of the age
of the Professor’ since ‘a professor is no more competent than memory banks in
transmitting established knowledge’ (p. 53) and, indeed, is poorer at using that
in a versatile and applied manner than the teams of employees that are increasingly
required in the world of work (and in preparation for which students will
be trained and credited in ‘skills’ such as ‘working in groups’, ‘leadership’ and
‘problem-solving’).
What all of this returns us to is the relativism of knowledge/information. To
Lyotard performativity, commodification and the manifest failure of ‘grand narratives’
have resulted in a refusal of all notions of privileged access to truth. Some
intellectuals might despair at this, but, as with postmodern devotees Baudrillard
and Vattimo, Lyotard (1993) considers that this can be liberating because the
decline
of the universal idea can free thought and life from totalizing obsessions. The
multiplicity of responsibilities, and their independence (their incompatibility),
oblige and will oblige those who take on those responsibilities . . . to be
flexible, tolerant, and svelte.
(Lyotard, 1993, p. 7)
With this, yet again, we are deep within postmodern culture.
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Critical comment
Each of those discussed above is a convinced postmodern thinker as well as being
persuaded that there is nowadays something one can reasonably call a postmodern
condition. My difficulty is that I can accept a good deal of the latter
diagnosis (without agreeing that this marks a new type of society), but cannot
endorse the former position, something which, in turn, profoundly influences my
response to the depiction of a postmodern condition. Postmodern thinkers do
have interesting and insightful things to say about the character and consequences
of informational developments. I do not think anyone can try seriously
to understand the contemporary world without some awareness of the centrality
and features of signification today (Baudrillard), without some consideration of
changes in modes of communication (Poster), without some recognition of the
diversity and range of world views made available by modern media (Vattimo),
and without some attention to the import of performativity criteria and commodification
for the informational realm (Lyotard).
However, postmodern thought’s dogged determination to relativise all knowledge,
to insist that there is no truth but only (an infinity of) versions of truth, has
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