Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND POSTMODERNITY
forces of capitalism with the learned professor’s clarity (Harvey, 2003). To the
postmodernist Harvey’s is but one reading, one interpretation among an infinity
of possibilities, and one which is rather noxious at that (Morris, 1992).
It has to be said that none of these studies is beyond criticism, not least by
those who can indicate shortcomings, absences and even prejudices in the
authors. Thus, for example, David Harvey would concede that his book might
have benefited from a more sensitive appreciation of feminism (Massey, 1991).
However, from admission of the value of critique to endorsement of the postmodern
dogma that everything is but an interpretation is an unacceptable leap
because in between is the matter of substantive analysis. We can readily agree
that each account is partial, but it cannot be dismissed – or seen as but equal to
any other ‘reading’ – on that account, because one must demonstrate how some
accounts are more, and others less, partial. In other words, we are reminded of
the untenability of the postmodern celebration of relativism, an assertion that
subverts its own statements in the very act of denying all claims to truth.
Conclusion
As a description of the world in which we live, the term ‘postmodernity’ has value.
Its emphasis on the ferment of change, on fluidity, on scepticism and a penchant
for irony, and on the instability of relationships captures some of the distinguishing
features of our times. The foremost sociologist of postmodernity, Zygmunt
Bauman, illuminates core elements of contemporary existence, notably the
perpetual uncertainty which underlies the surfeit of choices to be made about
everything from one’s hair colour to whether to support Amnesty International.
Postmodernity as a condition allows greater appreciation of how much constraints
have been removed from our lives today compared to those imposed on our predecessors,
as, too, does it highlight the disturbing imperative that we must choose
how we are to live now, though clear grounds for choice have crumbled. In turn,
Bauman’s attention to ‘seduction’ alerts us to the special significance of marketing,
advertising, celebrity – the entire range of media and associated imagery essential
for a time in which previous systems of control have diminished in force.
Further, the emphasis of postmodern thinkers on the sign and signification, on
simulation and inauthenticity, on the transformative power of performativity
criteria applied to information and knowledge, and acknowledgement of the
import of electronically mediated information are all useful to students of the
‘information revolution’.
However, it is doubtful that ‘we are entering a genuinely new historical configuration’
(Crook et al., 1992, p. 1). Quite the contrary, most of the postmodern
condition’s characteristics are explicable in terms of ongoing, if accelerating,
trends, ones identified and explained effectively by modernist thinkers such as
Herbert Schiller, Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens and David Harvey. Like
post-industrial theory, postmodernism proclaims a new primacy to information
and with it the arrival of a fundamentally different sort of society. And, also as
with post-industrialism, the proclamation cannot be sustained in face of scrutiny.
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