MerryChristmas, Lyotard

At the end of his piece, Lyotard defines the idea of postmodernity. He says, "The postmodern would be that which puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself...that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable." He then goes on to say that, "The artist and writer are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done."

These statements, although hard to grasp, stood out to me. They stood out to me because at one point I watched a youtube video titled "Did You Know 2.0". The video was created by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod. The thought-provoking video addresses this idea of postmodernity and that we are living in exponential times. It introduces statistics and graphics that help to explain the phenomenon that is going on right in front of our eyes. The video reflects on the impact of technology (specifically the computer) and this notion of globalization from political, educational, and relational standpoints. Perhaps the most interesting statistic in the video is that "predictions are that by the time children born in 2007 are six years old, a supercomputers computation capabilities will exceed that of the human brain".

Now, I know that I have gone off on a tangent, but at the end of the movie, the creators reflect on how all of the information ties together. This is where Lyotard's statements reign true. They say, "We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don't yet exist...in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet." That statement represents postmodernity. The classes we are taking currently for our new major (CMC) is an example of postmodernity. Our major is preparing us for a world that we are trying to understand. I thought it was ironic that the video states, "Many of today's college majors didn't exist 10 years ago" and the first major that comes up is "New Media".

By studying what we are studying, we are reinforcing the notion of a postmodern world. We are the postmodern world and Lyotard predicted this before we even began studying his piece. (Here is the link to the video if you want to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U)