The "gnutellafication" of the NYT, CBS and MSM < Experts and Gate-keepers Dethroned >

Emerging Church ^ | 11/12/03 | Editors

[Helms]

Postmodernism and the "gnutellafication" of the mainstream media.

what is postmodernism?

well, there are many answers to the question, coming from the vantage points of architecture, philosophy, music, sociology, literature, and theology, so the definitions are multi -phasic and nuanced.

"postmodernity" refers to a cultural stasis or "state of being," while "postmodernism" references cultural currents or streams circulating within the stasis.

in any case, the notion of postmodernity arose out of the matrix of western civilization and its attendent cultural and philosophical foundations, which presuppose the prior "pre-modern" and "modern" dispensations.

the cultural shift from the modern to the postmodern began in the 1960's. (* ) the famed political economist francis fukuyama described the shift from the modern to postmodern era as the great disruption.

anyone born after 1960 is "native" to this era. other generations are naturalized citizens. so, whether native or naturalized, we all are part of the postmodern world.

in a large nutshell, some key characteristics of postmodernity include:

skepticism about or outright rejection of enlightenment assumptions

the rise of globalization & pluralism

the "gnutellafication" of authority and knowledge

the customization and subjectification of truth

• the rejection of enlightment principles includes the loss of faith in the salvific powers of science and in the eternal hope for "progress."
• the rise of globalization & pluralism means (for example), that the literary contributions of "dead white males," are no longer deemed superior to the contributions of women, native peoples, and people of color.

in other words, "gone with the wind, meet "the wind done gone." in all fields of endeavor, previously closed canons are being opened up, and new gifts are being added to the mix.

• the gnutellafication of authority & knowledge references the brilliant digital music swaping platform called gnutella, which not only cut out the music industry middlemen (a la napster) but also cut out all "central servers."

in other words, in the postmodern culture,the roles and functions of all "experts" and "gate-keepers" are being reduced or re-directed.

the customization & subjectification of truth means that culturally supported meta-narratives and broad-cast notions of truth have been defacto de-constructed.

postmodern truths are concepts that are narrow-cast, self-discovered and authoritative only for the person seeking them.

the modern creedal orientation of "we believe, "has been subverted by the postmodern creedal orientation summed up by sheryl crow in her song which proclaims "if it makes you happy, it can't be half bad."

Cite: http://www.emergingchurch.org/postmodern.html

[Buckhead]

You're Twilight Zone post is well said.

I have a bit of a problem with the author's nomenclature. Modernism as chronicled in Paul Johnson's Modern Times is the history of modernism, that is to say, relativism, in all fields of human endeavor, politics, law, psychology, painting, music, literature, architecture, etc., etc.

Postmodernism was a rejection of modernism and a return to classical forms, at least in architecture. There were some beautiful neoclassical buildings built in the80's under the guise of postmodernism. Now, this guy uses the term postmodernism to describe the nihilistic deconstructionism of late modernism.

It's all so confusing. In any case, they're a-holes, no matter the label. Stanley Fish, Mark Tushnet. Uggh.

Also, the term "gnutellafication" is a rather inelegant neologism, but I get and endorse the point. But we are in serious need of a better word than that.

[Buckhead]

The net is a neutral communications medium that is used for good and ill. You have to get down to cases to figure out which is which. When it comes to the MSM, the internet has enabled the informed yeoman citizen to do something more than just yell at the tv set when the MSM starts talking that jive bs. The yeoman citizen can now do what the framers contemplated they should do. Consider how apt is this quote from John Adams' Dissertation on The Canon and Feudal Law, from 1765:

Care has been taken that the art of printing should be encouraged, and that it should be easy and cheap and safe for any person to communicate his thoughts to the public. And you, Messieurs printers, whatever the tyrants of the earth may say of your paper, have done important service to your country by your readiness and freedom in publishing the speculations of the curious. The stale, impudent insinuations of slander and sedition, with which the gormandizers of power have endeavored to discredit your paper, are so much the more to your honor; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. And if the public interest, liberty, and happiness have been in danger from the ambition or avarice of any great man, whatever may be his politeness, address, learning, ingenuity, and, in other respects, integrity and humanity, you have done yourselves honor and your country service by publishing and pointing out that avarice and ambition.

Kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, doesn't it?

Knowledge is power, and the MSM formerly had oligarchical control over its acquisition, dissemination and interpretation. Well, thanks to the web, we have equal if not greater access to knowledge than they do. We have our collective knowledge and expertise, massively parallel investigating and fact checking, and a real time information marketplace that weeds out fact from fiction. So, instead of yelling at the tv set, we post it. And, there are enough of us that it really has an effect. We're not as dumb as they think, they are not as smart as they think, and we are not just going to get on all fours and say "Please Sir, may I have another?" while they feed us crap and expect us to like it.

[risk]

Postmodernism is by definition altered by time and space. The Internet alters significantly time and space.

These are popular translations of the concept of post-modernism and post-structuralist analysis, but they really have no bearing on the process of studying text and culture in terms of those methodologies.

The Internet is post-modern in the minds of some of its fans. It is post-modern in the eyes of popular pundits, but that's about it. The Internet does not alter space and time at all, not on its own. It doesn't change the laws of physics.

We can't equate the impact of media such as fiber optic data transmission lines, with the choice of cultural analysis techniques used by our top educational institutions. Likewise, encountering the "global village" (created by radio telegraph, ocean cable telegraph, satellite TV and the Internet) has preceded this culturally relativistic scholarship. But that doesn't mean that we had to react the way we did on an intellectual level. And many didn't. Scholars like Foucault and Derrida simply made a big splash because they came up with such interesting perspectives. In many ways, their ideas are useful.

The problem is that unchecked, post-modernism and post-structuralism have been applied where they did not belong. The product is the natural undisciplined response: cultural relativism. It could have produced the opposite! For example, by definition a culture that has lost its power and influence in the 20th century or before should be abandoned. Why would we be interested in any third world culture other than for historic purposes? Yet the irrational fans of post-structuralism praise the east and its "oppressed glories." Edward Said uses post-structuralism to shred exclusionary western "narrative" and "marginalism."

But why shouldn't we exclude savagery, cannibalism, idol worship, tribalism, and oligarchy? The west is the best. From Japan to Buenos Ares, western civilization is king. Why? Because of truth. Truth, law, and a reliance on the sovereignty of the individual are the power behind our success. One can argue that these precepts emerged from Christianity, but they are also inherent in the human being. Doctrine may reflect these facets of our nature and visa versa.

Whatever the case, applied post-structuralism is like a cancer eating our body politic. There is nothing wrong with filtering culture with post-structural analysis as long as it is just seen as one lens for examining truth. But undisciplined or nihilistic thinkers have come to believe that it is a tool for destroying the west. Freedom can't exist where the concept of liberty is obscured by psychobabble. Psychobabble is going to destroy us. The truth shall set us free!

[Grampa Dave]

"Care has been taken that the art of printing should be encouraged, and that it should be easy and cheap and safe for any person to communicate his thoughts to the public. And you, Messieurs printers, whatever the tyrants of the earth may say of your paper, have done important service to your country by your readiness and freedom in publishing the speculations of the curious. The stale, impudent insinuations of slander and sedition, with which the gormandizers of power have endeavored to discredit your paper, are so much the more to your honor; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. And if the public interest, liberty, and happiness have been in danger from the ambition or avarice of any great man, whatever may be his politeness, address, learning, ingenuity, and, in other respects, integrity and humanity, you have done yourselves honor and your country service by publishing and pointing out that avarice and ambition. "

"Kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, doesn't it?"

Yes, it does.

Knowledge is power, and the MSM formerly had oligarchical control over its acquisition, dissemination and interpretation. Well, thanks to the web, we have equal if not greater access to knowledge than they do. We have our collective knowledge and expertise, massively parallel investigating and fact checking, and a real time information marketplace that weeds out fact from fiction. So, instead of yelling at the tv set, we post it. And, there are enough of us that it really has an effect. We're not as dumb as they think, they are not as smart as they think, and we are not just going to get on all fours and say "Please Sir, may I have another?" while they feed us crap and expect us to like it."

This paragraph makes my hair stand up on the back of my neck causes a big smile. We no longer have to take their bs, and as you proved, we can stop the dispensing of that bs.

Thanks for your comments.

[GOPJ]

Good one:

What has come to be known as "postmodernism" is just a very bizarre, convaluted style of repackaging epistemological skepticism and moral relativism. The dissembling nihilism of this movement does very little to advance genuine knowledge. The flagrant omission of acknowledging the earlier conservative and Christian uses of the term "postmodern" suggest dishonesty or scholarly illiteracy.

Hence, the distortive use of the term "postmodernism" is worthy of one of our Twilight Zone awards for excessive left-wing kookiness.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Postmodernism was a rejection of modernism and a return to classical forms, at least in architecture. There were some beautiful neoclassical buildings built in the80's under the guise of postmodernism. Now, this guy uses the term postmodernism to describe the nihilistic deconstructionism of late modernism.

Absolutely correct. The architectural use is actually closer to what conservative and Christian thinkers meant by the passing of "modernity." Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House was a humorous and satirical treatment of the excesses of architectural modernism and minimalism. When the fads no longer worked to hold aesthetic attention, it was necessary to return to elements from older forms - classical, Georgian, Federalist, Tudor, Gothic, etc. We're still in the "revivals" and "postmodern" synthetic experiments now. Although...outrageous examples of "modernist" architecture are still unloaded on the public -like LA's monstrous new cathedral.

I seem to recall that Arnold Toynbee uses the term "Post-Modern" in A Study of History. The political theorist and philosopher of history Eric Voegelin talks about "modernity" in his 1951-1952 book The New Science of Politics . Guardini had been writing similarly in the 1940s (The End of the Modern World). What "postmodern" tended to mean around that time was the collapse of the secular hubris of the modern age and many of its idols, particularly a belief in unending social progress centered on modern liberalism, the modern nation state, and the various classes who had placed their hopes on science and technology while abandoning Christianity. The "postmodern" was then the period of reconfiguration and the social and cultural processes at work at sorting out these issues.

How the term was hijacked to signify the bizarre ideologies of skepticism and relativism in literary criticism and cultural theory is a strange episode in the history of ideas. It leads to a great deal of incoherence and equivocation in academic discourse. For the most part it is a circular discourse which has meaning only for French literary Marxists and their internal dilemmas. How it became a dominant discourse and ideology in American academia is quite bizarre in the extreme, although it answers to certain liberal fantasies.

I should add that there is an internal contradiction involved in claiming that essential or foundationalist knowledge is impossible. The claim itself involves just such a metaphysical assertion - "I have certain knowledge that certain knowledge is impossible." I think Derrida even admitted the contradiction but seemed to think this was an even deeper and esoteric mystical insight. Bizarre.

None of the left-wing books I have seen from the movement even come close to the proper form for framing a scholarly discussion on the pros and cons of moral relativism and epistemological skepticism. They are exercises on rhetoric, propaganda, and literary allusions.

In terms of left-wing "postmodernism" as an ironist skepticism, John Kerry's "I actually voted for the war before I voted against it," is a good example. Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Baudrillard, Habermas, Lyotard, Jameson, and Eagleton could each have written 700-page volumes explaining the hermeneutics and deep significance of that proclamation. Although perhaps Umberto Eco could do it more poetic and symbolic justice.

[cornelis]

"I have certain knowledge that certain knowledge is impossible."

This is as old as the hills and is what separated the ancients from the moderns. So, three positions: ancient, modern, post-modern. My guess is that most people's laconic dismissal of French chic is not sufficient enough to qualify as modern or ancient.

[Helms]

DAVID HARVEY, THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Harvey. THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY: AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF CULTURAL CHANGE. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990.

http://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/harvey.html

ECONOMIC/FINANCIAL BASIS OF THE POSTMODERN: In the most general terms, Harvey may be said to argue that the many manifestations of postmodernity flow from the basic operation of capital. He sees the operation of capital as a constant in the history of the past two centuries; its essential influence in postmodernity thus makes postmodernity less than unique but rather a special case of culture in a line of development that he traces back to the mid-nineteenth century in Europe and America.

SPACE-TIME COMPRESSION: For Harvey the most important cultural change in the transformation from Fordism to flexible accumulation--and from modernity to postmodernity--was the change in the human experience of space and time (Part III). His Plate 3.1 (p.241) gives a graphic rendering of his main point. It shows four maps of the world in descending order of size:

1500-1840 ("best average speed of horse drawn coaches and sailing ships was 10 m.p.h.")

1850-1930 ("steam locomotives averaged 65 m.p.h. and steam ships averaged 36 m.p.h.")

1950s ("propeller aircraft 300-400 m.p.h.")

1960s ("jet passenger aircraft 500-700 m.p.h.").

These increasing speeds of travel illustrate that in each phase the sense of global space changed; and with a change in the sense of space came a correlative change in the sense of time. Harvey carries this obvious point into a penetrating presentation of the change in sensibility, a change in the sense of reality itself, accompanying the changes in travel speeds.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Postmodernity changes our experience of space and time (e.g. in time – space compression, image-based society, globalization, ‘futures’ markets, etc.).

Time – space compression or the incredible shrinking world

Classical world - cosmic harmony, enduring values, present as the fulfillment of the past, history has already happened, the ancient world is complete, no significant elsewhere.

Medieval world - fixed cosmos and Christian orthodoxy – present misery ameliorated by promise of future heavenly paradise, no historical development, vague sense of elsewhere (Indies and China were otherwordly)

Renaissance world – exploration, expansion, secular world, new sciences, realism, men in search of earthly destiny.

Modern world – capitalism, futurism, mass production, time is money, urbanization, speed, the world grasped and mapped.

Postmodern world – globalization, post-industrial society, virtual forms of over-accumulation, time a commodity to be traded, distance ‘no object’, ‘instantaneous’ communication.

[cornelis]

Classical world . . . no significant elsewhere

Not for Socrates, it's still an aporia for Aristotle.

[cornelis]

no historical development

In the West, Augustine and Bede had a strong historical consciousness, something unexpected from Augustine since he is considered platonist. vague sense of elsewhere

This is incorrect. The medieval world had a very strong sense of elsewhere as they followed the framework of Augustine's City of God.

[ampat]

I couldn't find gnutellafication in my online dictionary.

[Grampa Dave]

Good summary of the various time periods.

[Grampa Dave]

We are probably defining "gnutellafication". Below is the search. #2 has the definition that I posted.


http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=gnutellafication

[Helms]

Some peg 1973 as the time of turn to Postmodernism ( interesting that it coincides with the Nixon debacle and Roe v. Wade ) . I believe that the philosophical aspects of Postmodernism cropped up in the 60's. PO-Mo is about the movement of Capital, Information and Leftist Philosophy.

http://www.logosjournal.com/carducci.htm

[Helms]

I couldn't find gnutellafication in my online dictionary"

The author is using a computer/IT metaphor which seems appropriate

[cornelis]

Good summary of the various time periods.

As you can see, I make the appropriate corrections.

Isn't it odd that often the little foxes spoil the vines?

[rwa265]

I was wondering the same thing. Now that I know (thanks, Helms) all I need to do is google Nutella to find out what that is.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks to the internet and Free Republic and the low priced and powerful PC's, we are grabbing the control of knowledge from the gatekeepers around the world.

Also, that gives us power and connections the average American has never had.

I have warned a couple of merchants not to play games with warranties when products went bad. A simple reminder that I was a retired guy who knew how to use the internet made them decide to back up their original warranty policies.

[cornelis]

True, you can find Plato on the Internet. Less on FR.

[mdmathis6]

It refers to the "peer to peer" relationships that the news media (ie they copy off one from another) have with each other. One news org develops a story(say NY Times) and the others derive their news and editorial views from it.