Digital Culture And Post-Modernism

Post-modernism can be classified as a late-20th-century movement regarding the style and concept of many areas in life such as arts, architecture, culture, literature, philosophy, history and economics. It is generally a representation of a departure from modernism and at its core is a distrust of grand theories and ideologies, as well as a problematical relationship with any form of “art”. It usually features a deliberate mixing of different artistic styles and media, the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, and often the incorporation of images relating to the consumerism and mass communication of the last-20th-century post-industrial movement (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2014). The paradigm shift after the Post-modernist times can be called the “Digital Age” or sometimes also known as the “Information Age”, or “New Media Age”. This is the period in human history where there was a move away from the traditional industry, which was brought about through industrialization, to an economy based on information computerization. The onset of the Digital Age is associated with the Digital Revolution just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Post-Modernist age (Wikipedia, 2014). While there is still definitely parts of the Post-Modernist era that still affect us daily, it is clear that there is a rise of a Digital Culture which is taking the world by storm.

Post Modernism and the rise of digital culture have had a great impact on the Arts, but especially in architecture. The theory of Post-Modernism in architecture was said to have started in response to the perceived dullness and failed Utopianism of the Modern movement (Wikipedia, 2014). Definitive Post-Modern architecture such as the works of Michael Grav...

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...d War 2 and the Cold War technologies, counter cultural techno-utopianism which saw the rise of Punk and Deconstructivism, and most importantly – Post Modernism. Even though the theory of Digital Culture is still in its early stage of development and there are still many different views and arguments on what it really encompasses of, it can be said that since its conception, digital technology has been analysed and examined through many schools of thoughts, theories and methodologies. Technology has been around through modernist and postmodernist times, and even though the “Digital Age” has not really been coined an era, the rise of digital culture even over just the past one to two decades have changed the way we conceive the future of digital technology and will definitely continue to be an even more integral part of our every day lives (Creeber and Martin, 2009).