More on cultural change

[frou_frou]

So, I'm finished with the '50s and am immersing myself in the '60s, which I consider to be one of the two most interesting periods of the 20th century, for all the change that it brought (the other is the '20s).

A quote from Rudi Gernrich in 1969:
Haute Couture doesn't have the same meaning any more, because money, status and power no longer have

Comments

[scopo]

'All you need to change the world is a good subscriber base....my how those above must be hating it?'

... and yet, there is still -- and I think will always be -- huge coercive, normative forces exerted on huge portions of the populus by 'power'. More than ever we're in a commoditised culture, a 'blockbuster' one where Stephanie Meyer is the new J K Rowling, or Kanye is the new Brittney, or whatever. 'A never-ending succession of specatacles.' Not to sound like a grumpy old Marxist (oh, OK then, I do sound like a grumpy old Marxist) but I've never seen that 'participation' in this commodity culture (with fan-fic or whatever) is anything other than 'the old con' of ideology.

On the other hand, technology does allow the disemmination of an awful lot more niches and subcultures than ever before.

If anything, I think the coming (or current) wave of cultural change will be the tension between micro-communities and corporatised mass culture, but I think it's simplistic to think that 'power' is in any way threatened.

[frou_frou]

Yes, I think you're quite right - but then it's early days and too soon to really see where all this is going to take us.

I can't help noticing that increasingly (especially for younger folk) we're seeking our news and information from non-mainstream directions. Places like LJ and FB highlight stuff quicker (and sometimes more effectively) than the media.

[tcpip]

A similar cultural change is happening now thanks to information and communication technology, with the internet: the power of the media is passing from those above (rich, powerful) to those of us down here.

It is a massive reduction in the capital barrier to be a publisher and commentator.

Will this be our big new cultural change?

Bigger than the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe.

[frou_frou]

Bigger than the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe.

I'm sure that was a huge shift, but what was the impact on architecture, art, music and dress? I'm looking for a cultural shift that affects these things as well as a change in how things happen.

[txxxpxx]

Well in a minor way you are seeing fashion acknowledging our reliance on the techology. Clothes & accessories have special pockets for phones or iPods and are having design elements incorporated to allow for easy access. There is even that memory fabric that has built in data storage which they were touting would replace phones all together

[tcpip]

Well, with movable type press I suspect we ended up with modernity. Changes to the means of communication, mass education, biblical criticism (oh noes) leading to secular society, science and technology etc.

Now the actual form will be incredibly varied. As txxxpxx pointed out there will be an integration of the technical and the aesthetic. But I certainly wouldn't want to second guess the actual presentation. Fashions and tastes will change; the Calvinist aesthetic of efficiency, to the baroque romanticism expressing lazy wealth.

Apologies for the late response. I spend a couple of days mulling over this.

PS: Sorry about the multiple posts.

[weasels_of_fire]

I agree that the all-consuming proliferation of technology (not to mention the simultaneously fetishistic and paranoid relationship with it that's still very much in place) is a critical factor in this cultural shift, but it also seems to me significant that people are unable to reconcile their immersion in and embrace of an internet-powered technorific society with profound old-world nostalgia, and aren't entirely sure how to act out that uncanny feeling of ambivalence and dislocation

[wildilocks]

While I agree that the barriers to "publishing" have been reduced hugely and the "power of the media" has been diluted a little, I think there's a bit of a misconception here about who's really in charge (still) and who actually owns *more* of your own personal information than ever before. FB is virtually mass media because of how much it channels the way information is shared and portrayed (as is Myspace: I would say LJ is small enough because of its' user-supported roots and lack of serious money behind it, to be a minor publisher, and rapidly losing market share unfortunately, because they simply don't have the investment capital the big SNs do and are trying to play that game now instead of the one Brad started which was a very different game). FB (and Myspace) have grown so huge and dominant purely because of the amount of money spent by those wealthy enough and with the desire to become dominant in the new media, so I don't see how things are really changing so much, in fact I think in many ways they are getting worse because