hmm hey pal how do you get to town from here and he said take a right where they're going to build that new shopping mall go straight past where they're going to put in the freeway and take a left at what's going to be the new sports center and keep going until you hit the place where they're thinking of building that driving bank you can't miss it and i said this must saul bellow wrote in his novel herzog he let the entire world press upon him for instance well for instance what it means to be a man in a city in a century in transition in a mass transformed by science under organized power subject to tremendous control in a condition caused by mechanization after the late failure of radical hopes in a society that was no community and devalued the person owing to the multiplied power of numbers that made the self the artist leon golov what two things are going on they're contradictory but they're the same thing it's very strange in a certain kind of way the world gets totalized more all the time it gets bigger it gets more massive communication makes it closer and so on so it's being totalized the same time communication is making it atomize so it's being broken down all at the same time so we're living in this world where everything around us is huge enormous deterministic everything else everything at the same time is being broken down you see uh disjunctive falling apart the critic frederick jameson at some point following world war ii a new kind of society began to emerge variously described as post-industrial society multinational capitalism consumer society media society and so forth new types of consumption planned obsolescence an ever more rapid rhythm of fashion and styling changes the penetration of advertising television and media generally to a hitherto unparalleled degree throughout society the replacement of the old tension between city and country center and province by the suburb and by universal standardization the growth of the great networks of the super highways and the arrival of the automobile culture these are some of the features which would seem to mark a radical it's not that we uh you know woke up in you know like whenever it was and said oh my god it's it's the era of personal modernism already um any more than anyone woke up and said [ __ ] it's the renaissance um so i don't think history moves like like that any suggestion that it does i think has to be resisted there have been enormous changes brought about by such things as microchip technology by nuclear weaponry by the mass bombardment of civilian populations by terrorism as a way of responding to frustration by the increased the ubiquitousness of techniques of surveillance and oppression control which is a response to this perhaps a growing paranoia thomas when countries and firms are ranked by either gross national product or gross annual sales general motors exxon ford shell general electric ibm mobile chrysler unilever rank among the 50 largest countries terry atkinson i wonder about for example my own kids being produced as some kind of smooth unquestioning cogs in a big multi-capitalist valhalla on the other hand i don't think one should think that that's stable i think one of the characteristics i think of multinational capitalism despite its apparent ability to spread this homogeneous cultural um patina across particularly i think the societies of the west is that it is really quite unstable five four three jean francois the postmodern it's based fundamentally upon the perception of the existence of a modern era that dates from the time of the enlightenment and that has now run its course and this modern era was predicated on a notion of a progress in knowledge in the arts in technology in human freedom as well all of which was thought of as leading to a truly emancipated society a society emancipated from poverty despotism and ignorance but all of us can see that development continues to take place without leading to the realization of any of these dreams of emancipation so today one no longer feels guilty about being ignorant speech is free perhaps but i am less free than before i no longer succeed in knowing what i want the space is so saturated the pressure's so great from all who want to make themselves i don't see any change happening you know i see i do see people wanting that change but i don't see anything happening i just see that kind of main order getting further and further entrenched um and using the myth that there are all sorts of different people knocking at the door and trying to change this thing just to divide those smaller sections from each other susan sontag cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society as a spectacle for masses and as an object of surveillance for rulers social change is replaced by a change in images the freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself as we make images and consume them we need still more images and still more mary say the positive aspect of the post-modern condition is that we no longer see a kind of hierarchy of practices or ideas that means we've got rid of the kind of dogmatism of the correct view but that doesn't mean anything goes what the other side of that is lack of commitment and i think that in this productive moment of realizing that the social comprises a number of different expressions that we have to be extremely positive about what aspect of that we're going to challenge and attempt to change you