Technology has become decoupled from cultural form and no longer announces rupture

Evidence

The very concept of belief is then the casualty of a period in which otherness as such — valorized difference resulting in an exceptionalism of the present, with its subalternities of the past and of other cultures — is critically grasped as a cornerstone of the modern and as its most deeply cherished superstition about itself. The clear conscience of the postmodern in this respect has not, of course, been paid for by any principled abdication of the technological and scientific infrastructure on which modernity’s claim to difference was based; rather, it has been bought on credit and concealed by the representational transformation of that infrastructure in which the word processor replaces the assembly line in the collective mind’s eye. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 832 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Where we once pleaded for status in person (or through media reporting of real-life appearances at social events), there is now a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week pageant of flexing on social media apps. Elites could once protect their status symbols behind information barriers and exclusive access to products; now nearly everything is available to nearly everyone. Meanwhile, the fragmentation of culture into the “long tail” has diluted the power of taste to serve as an effective means of social exclusion. And the inherent hyperspeed of the internet means fashion cycles pump out ephemeral fads rather than era-defining trends. Subcultures once provided society with a constant stream of cultural innovations, but the most notable outsider group of the twenty-first century has been the internet trolls rebelling against diversity, equity, and inclusion through revanchist slogans and memes. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 30 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

To point to the potency of such a force in shaping culture as a total way of life is not necessarily to lapse, however, into a simple­ minded technological determinism of the ‘television causes post­ modernism’ variety. For television is itself a product of late capitalism and, as such, has to be seen in the context of the promotion of a culture of consumerism. This directs our attention to the production of needs and wants, the mobilization of desire and fantasy, of the politics of distraction as part and parcel of the push to sustain sufficient buoyancy of demand in consumer markets to keep capitalist production profitable. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 410 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Postmodernity abandons modern difference while retaining its technological infrastructure. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 832; The internet dismantled the mechanisms that once produced era-defining cultural trends — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 30; Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 410 (+4 more)

Related

• Postmodernity abandons modern difference while retaining its technological infrastructure. (similarity 0.85)
• Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically (similarity 0.84)
• Technology’s unification of all arts will expose the identity behind industrial culture (similarity 0.83)
• The internet dismantled the mechanisms that once produced era-defining cultural trends (similarity 0.81)
• Technological determinism is a fiction; context shapes technology use (similarity 0.81)
• Postmodernist thought arises from the new technologies of knowledge communication in advanced capitalism. (similarity 0.81)
• Postmodern aesthetic practices respond to an environment of image-and-message saturation (similarity 0.80)
• Postmodernity erases the boundary between commodity and its image (similarity 0.80)
• Postmodernism is a reflex of capitalism’s modification, not a new social order. (similarity 0.79)
• Technological determinism falsely credits tools alone with causing social change (similarity 0.79)
• Postmodernism erases the high culture versus mass culture boundary. (similarity 0.78)
• The technical knowledge interest’s value-basis was forgotten through capitalist modernization. (similarity 0.78)
• Culture’s dissolution means total expansion, not its disappearance (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernity abandons modern difference while retaining its technological infrastructure. #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 832
• The internet dismantled the mechanisms that once produced era-defining cultural trends #exemplifies (0.82) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 30
• Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically #qualifies (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 410
• Contemporary cultural objects repress the socio-economic context that past ones merely lost #complicates (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 694
• In postmodern architecture physical materials cease circulating while traditional infrastructures persist #complicates (0.75) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 202
• Language in the culture industry calculates and incites but no longer expresses. #corroborates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 258