Skinner Layne, in an article from June that escaped my attention until now called The Post-Modern Rhetoric of High Technology, does something that truly amazes me: He uses the philosophical break between the Enlightenment and postmodernism as a model for the murk which is Web 2.0. In general, the Slashdot snarksters were not impressed with Layne’s analysis and never having really grasped postmodernism myself I will not attempt to counter them.
Still, the argument does seem to have some legs in two regards. First, my own confusion regarding this school of thought is fairly common; Web 2.0 is similarly confusing and difficult to define consistently. Second, if something is “post-modern,” what does it say about that thing that it’s own proponents cannot proffer a name that defines the thing on it’s own terms? Web 2.0 is also not defined by its core attributes but by what came before.
Mostly I’m just impressed that a geek would have conceived of the connection, though a just out of school a 24 year old involved in both politics and web development is probably the most likely to do so.
BillSaysThis 