18/11/2007 - the PostModern and the PostMedia: BLACK IS THE NEW WHITE

Up is down, day is night, black is white. Welcome to PostMedia.

[clik here see a high resolution copy - best 4 broadband users]

In the old days everyone scratched a dry text upon a white page. The shape of the prose and the neatness on the page were important.

With the advent of the modern we learnt to mix it up a bit. Some color here. Some words there. A splash of video? Aesthetics and meaning became interlinked and interdependent. It pumped up our narrative.

Then the PostModern intervened – celebrating the triumph of method over meaning. Of aesthetic over content. Media and methodology morphed into message. However the more anything became possible, the more nothing was definitive. And for a while we seemed stuck in an endless loop of ever better regurgitated garbage. (Beautiful garbage, so carefully crafted.)

So where are we now? In the PostPostModern?

For the want of a better term let’s call it the PostMedia.

Where does the PostMedia exist? Within the blogoshere and chat-rooms of the virtual world the PostMedia is now being forged. You are involved even as you read this essay. To a large degree the on-line environment has drifted back to focus on content. It is no longer ‘anything goes’. Rules have been formulated and negotiated where once there were few or none.

So the on-line public square has gained a sharper definition and its inhabitants a new sophistication. The mood seems to be: ‘so now we have some idea of what the gee-whiz architecture looks - how about we get around to changing the world?’

And again content rules. But either very general or very specific content.

We now tend to choose the things we wish to consider and consider them far more carefully. We are all becoming forever more expert in the consideration of ever more particular things. Sometimes to the exclusion of the bigger picture. Sort of on-line idiot savants.

But let’s face it, we have no other choice - in the modern on-line world few have enough personal bandwidth to take it all in - so those immersed in the PostMedia have to be selective. Quality of information counts. And topic. And so does the consideration of other peoples views.

Not only the news item but the tenor of the response will be considered. The shape and immediate history of the public discourse might be at the core of the discussion. Any comment posted might relate to another comment, a stream of comments, the article above, a link within the article above, or in another comment, or even add further comment to a comment already commented upon.

And the majority of comments might relate to a consensus far removed from the forums original starting point. The PostMedia is far more akin to an old-fashioned public forum than any form of traditional mass media. The habit of most blogging forums is to drift from the particular to the general - towards a consensus about the shape of the topic being addressed.

After all, the new media is not all that new anymore. It has matured. We have collectively punched through the form (the novelty) and are now back on message. But it’s not the same old message. The text based interactive on-line format, (ie blogging in all its forms) has provided us all with Message 2.0. The new language of the PostMedia

       In Message2.0:

Metaphor is no longer in vogue. The on-line environment is a place to condense your message. To explore links without (once more) exploring the narratives being linked. Metonym rather than metaphor is employed. For we all utilise a powerful form of metonym everyday – the Hyperlink allows for whole swathes of meaning to be included in innovative ways.

Message2.0 is constrained not only by the on-line modality, but also the shape and history of the discourse. Any movement too far outside an agreed public arena, (‘straying off topic’) is unlikely to elicit any response, let alone a desired response.

So respondents usually read a blog for several days, learning to comprehend both the content and dynamic of the discussion, before ‘putting their two cents in’.

But within the agreed on rules of engagement, as they gradually master Message2.0, the respondent finds a host of new weapons at their disposal.

This new idiom is highly mediated but also strangely powerful. An interactive mass-media linked text-based language. Because it is interactive it can be a very self affirming and pleasant process.

Message2.0 provides a comforting sense of being a part of a mass movement. Where information is not simply consumed. A public square where we all feel part of a collective practice of integrating the implications of political, social, and environmental information.

In Message2.0 the word ‘News’ no longer has any commensense meaning.

There is data. There is reporting. There is speculation. And there is what I think. We are all ‘authorities’ now.

See Gather.com blog

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