Postmodernism and the Web

Postmodernism and the Web: Meta Themes and Discourse PIERRE BERTHON, LEYLAND PITT, and RICHARD T. WATSON

ABSTRACT How are we to make sense of the Web and our involvement in it? This is no light matter, for how we make sense of what was, and is, delimits what will be. Thus, as more and more individuals, organizations, and communities establish a presence in cyberspace, the question of how to enact the new medium presents challenges to practitioners and academics alike. How might symbolic and economic activity be conducted and conceptualized? Different assumptions about the Web will result in disparate activities—and concomitant creation of different social, economic, and technological futures. The article outlines the discourses of modernism and postmodernism, and explores the phenomenon of the Web using a series of postmodern themes—a rubric of praxes and thoughts that characterizes the information age. We conclude that postmodernism illuminates thinking in the new information medium, just as modernism illuminated thinking in traditional physical mediums.  2000 Elsevier Science Inc.

Introduction Current media views and perspectives on the phenomenon known as the Web vary from its dismissal as a fad to its acclaim as the most significant contribution to communication since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type. Yet perhaps both perspectives miss this technology’s greatest impact—its ability to radically change the nature and direction of society. The Web may well be the single most important technological and social phenomenon of the fin de sie`cle, the implications of which we may only begin to fully comprehend well into the third millennium. Technology and society are reciprocally linked such that the trajectories of both are codependent and emergent. Technology is one the one hand a product of people (along with being marketed/used by people), and on the other hand, their producer. The former statement is self-evident—scientists and engineers develop technology that is then marketed and used by individuals and communities. However, technology is not passive. Products produce people in the following all-too-active senses. First, technology PIERRE BERTHON is Professor of Marketing at the School of Management, University of Bath, Bath, UK. LEYLAND PITT is Professor of Marketing at the Department of Marketing, Cardiff Business School University of Cardiff, UK. RICHARD T. WATSON is Professor of Information systems at the Department of Management, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA. Address correspondence to Dr. P. Berthon, School of Management, University of Bath BA2 7AY, UK (E-mail: [email protected]).

Technological Forecasting and Social Change 65, 265–279 (2000)  2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010

0040-1625/00/$–see front matter PII S0040-1625(99)00067-0

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Fig. 1. Web technology, individuals, communities and markets.

enables and influences how people enact their self-identities. Second, technology can change how people interact and enable the possibilities of certain types of community, while shaping the development and evolution of extant social groups. Third, technology makes possible certain types of market, and influences how other types operate. Finally, through each of the above, technology changes how people interact with the wider natural environment. Obviously, all technologies are “active” in different degrees. However, we argue that the Web is possibly one of the most active technologies at work today—active in a way that may radically change people’s self identities, the nature and possibility of community, and the way markets operate. These (inter)relationships are illustrated in Figure 1. Trying to make sense of the Web and its impact on society (individuals, communities, markets, and—through these—the wider natural world) is no simple matter, yet as an increasing number of individuals, organizations, and communities establish a presence in the medium, the need becomes exigent. Different assumptions about the Web will result in disparate activities—and concomitant creation of different social, economic, and technological futures. Traditional models of social and economic interaction are likely to prove wanting [1, 2]. While trends such as changing technology, commercialization, and demographics are important in understanding the Web, they represent only a small part of the story. We propose that more fundamental shifts can be uncovered by changing to a higher level of abstraction, by refocusing from elements to relationships, and by drawing on the work of a disparate body of thinkers—from artists to philosophers, historians to scientists—whose fragmented works have come to be delineated “postmodern.” Indeed, postmodernism can be seen as the rubric of thought which resonates most strongly with the Information Age [3], just as Modernism was the philosophy that embodied the Industrial Age. While there is little agreement on, or indeed collective

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understanding of, what constitutes postmodernism,1 various broad, overlapping themes are discernible [4–7]. In this article we explore the Web through the postmodern themes of fragmentation, dedifferentiation, hyperreality, time and space, paradox, and anti-foundationalism. The first two themes—fragmentation (disintegration) and dedifferentiation—represent the opposites (or counterparts) of two of modernism’s favorite systems concepts— integration and differentiation. The themes of hyperreality and space-time counter the traditional modernist assumption of what constitutes reality and progress. Antifoundationalism, pastiche, and pluralism all question the modernist love of the one right answer (theory, way, view, voice, etc.). Although present in the media and medium, we argue that it is in the Web that postmodernist thought finds its most quintessential disembodiment. This may be an important insight, for virtual realms, of which the Web is perhaps the most important, comprise perhaps the greatest social, organizational, and economic challenge—and opportunity—of the late twentieth century (cf. [8, 9]).

What is Modernism?2 Modernity comprises those efforts to develop objective knowledge, absolute truths, universal morality and law, and autonomous art [5]. It is the sustained attempt to free human thinking and action from the irrationality of superstition, myth, and religion. It comprises the basic summons toward human emancipation, clearly enunciated in the Enlightenment. It has at its heart the idea of the rational subject as the primary vehicle for progress and liberation. It stresses unity (underneath we are all the same) and progress (tomorrow will be better than today). So to be modern is to find oneself in an environment that promises adventure, power, joy, growth, and transformation of ourselves and the world [10]. Its themes, in contrast to postmodernism, comprise integration, differentiation, objective reality, linear time and delineated space, orthodoxy, unity, and foundationalism. Postmodernism Modernism and postmodernism can be thought of as umbrella terms comprising many threads. However modernism is a more coherent movement (because it values coherence) that has at its heart one fairly distinct core philosophy, ideology, and belief system. In contrast, postmodernism is characterized by multiple ideologies, multiple philosophies and multiple beliefs; indeed postmodernism in some of its many guises actively seeks to undermine ideology and belief [11]. Postmodernism seeks to subvert and debunk the assumptions underpinning previous ages, thought systems, and discourses. Obviously, this has the potential of degenerating into nihilism, as postmodernism may eventually turn in upon itself and implode in a postmodernist Go¨tterda¨mmerung. To paraphrase Churchman [12], the greatest challenge to unreason is unreason. The concept of difference is central to understanding the discourse of postmodernism. Difference is defined as a self-referentiality, in which terms contain their opposites and thus refuse a singular grasp of their meaning: difference is thus a unity that is at the same time divided form itself ([13], page 98). From this perspective, unitary truth is transmuted to paradox: identity to image. This is manifest in the postmodernist view of language. For in contrast to modernism, where language is viewed as a window 1

Q: “What’s the difference between the Mafia and a postmodernist?” A: “A postmodernist makes you an offer they can’t understand” (with apologies to Brown and Woolgar). 2 A slogan for a modernist is exemplified in the words of Hegel: “The real is rational; the rational real.”

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Theme

Modernism

Post-Modernism

Relationships between elements in a system Nature of reality

Integration and Differentiation

Nature of time and space

Linear, unitary, progressive chronology Space is delineated— Space is time Orthodox, Consistency, and Homogeneity Foundationalism

Disintegration (Fragmentation) and Dedifferentiation Reality is subjective, fluid, “in here,” constructed, indeterminate, and imagined— “Hyperreality” Cyclic, multi-threaded, fragmented chronology Space is imploded (negated)— Time is space Paradox, Reflexivity and Pastiche

Embodied values Attitude towards meta-narratives and the social institutions which produce them

Reality is objective, hard, “out there,” discovered, and physical—“Reality”

Anti-foundatinalism

on, or mirror of, external reality, postmodernism argues that “Language is entirely intertextual—words refer to one another in wholly contingent manners without touching any translinguistic reality” ([11], page 50). In the Nominalist tradition, an unbridgeable schism appears between the verbum and the res. This insight has major ramifications for all types of systems—from systems of scientific and philosophical thought to systems of people and organizations. Specifically, systems fragment, traditional system boundaries blur, reality gives way to image, our understanding and experience of space and time is revised, and absolutes or foundations in all guises are questioned. The differences between modernism and postmodernism are summarized in Table 1. We explore these issues specifically in relation to the Web. The themes employed are fragmentation, dedifferentiation, hyperreality, time and space, paradox, and antifoundationalism. Before commencing with our exploration a number of points should be made. First, there are aspects of the Web that are undeniably modern: indeed it can be viewed as the latest technological incarnation of the modernist dream of adventure, progress, and liberation [14]. However, it is our intention to focus on the Web’s postmodern aspects. Second, ironically and yet apropos in a discussion of postmodernism, it is only the existence of a modern foundational infrastructure (logical computers, integrated networks, and universal communications protocols) that enables a virtual and quintessentially postmodern world to come into becoming. Finally, although the themes discussed are presented as distinct categories, this is for heuristic purposes only. The categories are far from mutually exclusive—each contains, reflects, and refracts elements of the others. Employing a visual metaphor (worryingly modernist in overtone!), the themes offer different perspectives of a transparent object. Each theme will be discussed in turn using two approaches: (1) an outline in general, abstract terms, and (2) its relation to the Web. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ELEMENTS IN A SYSTEM: FRAGMENTATION

As we approach the end of the second millenium, it is all too apparent that there is a process of fragmentation or disintegration of traditional systems at all levels. For example, this process can be seen within countries (USSR and UK), social groups (the family), political parties (the Communist party in many states), and organizations (e.g.,

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AT&T). On an abstract level, fragmentation manifests as the questioning of philosophical and psychological notions of the unified self, and the concomitant shattering of nature and grounds of unified, objective knowledge. Finally, on an experiential level, peoples’ lives are becoming increasingly disjointed and fragmented in contemporary society. We argue that the Web embodies and facilitates this process of fragmentation. FRAGMENTATION AND THE WEB

Fragmentation is apparent in a number of different spheres on the Web. First, the Web offers the ultimate in niche marketing: millions of discussion groups, news groups, special interest groups, and a greater diversity of product and service than any High Street or mall. Indeed a significant amount of the material placed on the Internet is designed to reach a single person, a handful of people, or a group of less than 1,000 ([15], page 65). Second, the very fact that people find companies, rather than vice versa, as in traditional medium [16], means that the premise of mass marketing is rendered questionable at best and irrelevant at worst. The advent of push technologies may render part of the Web a little more familiar to traditional marketing thought. However, to bank on this is to misunderstand the nature of the Web and ignore its possibilities. Third, people experience and behave differently in the new medium, with the Web seeing a fragmentation of consensus—about issues and selves. Research suggests that people feel more able to disagree and express differences in virtual media and specifically on the Internet [17]. Respondents in computer-mediated environments are more frank on sensitive topics, yet more inclined to offer false information in order to avoid identification [18]. There is a lack of self-awareness and of self-regulation of behavior— deindividuation [19]. Concomitantly, the new medium has fueled and facilitated to an unprecedented degree the fragmentation of the self—individuals participating in MUDs, MOOs,3 and discussion groups regularly adopt multiple, often-contradictory identities, personas and personalities [20]. For example, 20% of respondents regularly pose as the opposite gender on the Internet [17]. Indeed, Turkle [21] argues that computer-mediated reality encourages people to take on multiple online personas to the extent that RL (real life) becomes just another shard of a fragmented imagination. Fourth, the Web is the ultimate global presence. This would seem to result in unprecedented unification, yet as Bohm [22] and Taylor and Saarinen [23] perspicaciously point out, the more closely we are related, the more pronounced our differences become. This observation echoes Freud’s thesis of the “narcissus of minor difference” [24]. In a sense, digitization is the ultimate embodiment of this phenomenon—sans the feeling dimension. Digitization breaks down wholes or gestalts (people, personalities, human beings) into millions of fragments, disconnected minutiae which can then be recombined across people into dehumanized profiles, which (from a humanist perspective) can then act as an iron cage to living flesh and blood [25]. Furthermore, the underlying Internet communication protocol, packet switching, disassembles messages into packages. These fragments, mingled with many other fragments, are transported from sender to receiver, where they are finally reassembled. The Web takes this digitization and packetizing to unprecedented lengths, with Internet companies, from banks to bookshops, typically knowing much more about their customers than traditional marketplace-based firms. Yet paradoxically, as digitization facilitates the much-prosely3 Multi-user dimension or dungeon (MUD). A multiple-user electronic virtual world that is ongoing, comprising an electronically assembled group of people (physically disembodied and virtually re-embodied) and bots, interacting in cyberspace. MOOs (MUDs-Object Oriented) are the more technologically sophisticated successors to MUDs.

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tized and sought-after personal contact with the customer, the customer becomes ever more ephemeral, for the same digitization process allows him or her to recreate and reinvent themselves in a collage of co-existing selves. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ELEMENTS IN A SYSTEM: DEDIFFERENTIATION

Fragmentation’s compliment is dedifferentiation. The dedifferentiation of traditional system boundaries comprises the blurring, erosion, effacement, and elution of established political, social and economic boundaries (be these hierarchical or horizontal). Examples include boundaries between high and low culture, education and entertainment, teaching and acting, politics and show business, programs and advertisements, philosophy and literature, fact and fiction, author and reader, science and religion, producer and consumer. It is the dissolution of established distinctions that is captured by terms such as edutainment, infomercial, docudrama, and scientology. Dedifferentiation is one of the Web’s defining characteristics. DEDIFFERENTIATION AND THE WEB

The Web dissolves perimeters of time, place, and culture. Boundaries between nations, home and work, intimate time and business time, between night and day, and between individuals and organizations. There is no sovereignty in a boundaryless, electronic world [26]. Capital, consumers, and corporations, in the form of communication packets, cross political boundaries millions of times everyday. We explore two distinctions that the Web is blurring: fact and fantasy, public and private. First, although hyperreality will be discussed in detail in the next section, it is important to point out that the distinction between reality and virtual reality diminishes on the Web. Fact and fantasy coalesce, the distinction between representations and their physical referents become increasingly blurred. As Web usage increases and more and more cultural objects are viewed on computer screens, there is likely to be a growing confusion of the representation with the original objects they portray ([15], page 67). Amazon.com, promoted as the world’s largest bookstore, stocks a few bestsellers. The Web site is the defining presence—the reality is created not by bricks, mortar, and paper, but by digitized fragments displayed on a computer monitor. An example from the Web that illustrates this, as well as the concomitant blurring ` e Imaginaire. Le MusE`e of the distinction between high and low culture, is Le MusE Imaginaire sells paintings by the world’s most famous artists, such as Van Gogh, Canaletto, and Turner, to the world’s most famous people, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sophia Loren, and Michael Jackson. The irony is that they are all fakes—genuine “authentic” fakes. (This can be taken two ways: the pictures are fakes, and the people who buy them are fakes in the sense of being actors and actresses). The fact that the site has received numerous Web-design or cool site awards (despite being rather amateurish in design and execution) is testimony to a cyberculture which values the image equal to, or indeed over and above, the real. Indeed, in the simulacrum, how can one distinguish the authentic from the fake? A search engine may return 10,000 hits on Shakespeare, but cannot tell you which contain genuine content written by the Bard, informed discussion of his works, or complete moonshine. This echoes the endemic problem in cyberspace of establishing authenticity, and indeed questions the very notion of our prior conceptual distinctions. When everything is a representation, how can one speak of an original? The distinction between private and public is rendered especially problematic on the Web [27]. All activity (personal and commercial) in cyberspace is routinely monitored to a degree unimaginable in the physical world [28]. A person’s activities can be, and

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routinely are, catalogued in minute detail, and used to build intimate and revealing profiles of that person. People remain ambivalent to this monitoring for, on the one hand, it can help in channeling products and services that exhibit added value to the individual; on the other, it can represent a flagrant breech of a person’s privacy. Anonymity or privacy in cyberspace is an anathema, yet there still exist an informal code of conduct that respects a person’s privacy. Thus while many sites collect information on visitors, it is typically kept for site-specific use only, and the code explains (in part) the outcry over governments’ attempts to include back doors in encryption technology. In summary, the Web blurs the distinction between private and public in a way that makes it difficult to compartmentalize our lives in the same way as in the physical world. NATURE OF REALITY: HYPERREALITY

Modernism’s obsession with objective reality finds a complement in postmodernism’s fascination with the hyperreal. Hyperreality is an event wherein the artifact is even better than the real thing. In a three-stage process: we have (1) the “real” original, (2) the image of the original, and finally (3) the image uncoupled, unfettered, de´gage´ from the “real” original. Examples include the fantasy world of theme parks (Disneyland), virtual reality (role-playing MUDs, MOOs, and GMUKS4), soap operas (Third Rock from the Sun), films (The Lost World), and computer games (Myst). These are exemplifications of what was previously considered a simulation or reflection becoming real—indeed, more real than the real thing. Hyperreality engenders a general loss of the sense of authenticity—i.e., what is genuine or real. HYPERREALITY AND THE WEB

The Web is hyperreality. For example, Hoffman and Novak [29] contend that surfers experience telepresence—the extent to which a person feels present in the hypermedia environment of the Web [30]—when they enter states of high flow [31]. As others have argued (and observed), this can lead to addictive surfing—where the normal world is rejected in favor of the virtual, and often fantasy, world of the Web [32]. For example, PJC Ventures is selling plots of land via the Web at $9.95 for 100 acres: nothing particularly hyperreal, other than the low price, until one finds out that the plots are on Mars, Pluto, and other planets! The detachment from reality becomes even more extreme in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and the 1967 multilateral treaty specifying that no person or country can own any part of space. Despite this, some 1,000 plots of land have been sold on Mars and a further 13,000 on the Moon [33]. The sense of hyperreality is magnified as it becomes increasing difficult to distinguish between genuine and spoof sites (e.g., Microsnot versus Microsoft), and between professional (run by qualified practitioners) and amateur (run by unqualified enthusiasts) sites—(Dr. Mom versus BMJ). Digital images can, and are, seamlessly modified [15]. Consider the site “Hillary’s Hair,” which allows surfers to view a vast range of pictures of the First Lady sporting various hairstyles, ranging from the elegant to the very unflattering. But perhaps a more dramatic manifestation of the hyperreal world created by the Web is the case of “bots,” or intelligent agents. Agents are intelligent, autonomous, human-like computer programs that can help in a variety of tasks, such as using, maintaining, and optimizing your computer, navigating through a complex on-line file structure, and advising players in MUDs, MOOs, etc. Bots are virtual creations designed to pass as human beings. As the sophistication of these agents increases, people have 4 A GMUK (Graphical Multi-User Konversations, or “habitats”) is a multimedia chat environment, and effectively comprises a cross between a MOO and a chat room.

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been observed to develop emotional relationships with these bots, often unaware that they are virtual creations (indeed, the word robot is inappropriate for these entities: they are simulacra [34]). However, perhaps even more importantly, those who are aware that these agents are virtual still find themselves emotionally engaged and treat them as real people. Foner [35] documents the case of Julia, an agent of the Mass-Neotek family of robots. He recalls people’s attitudes towards, treatment of, and emotional involvement with the robot as a real person. Furthermore, he reproduces the log of an amusing, yet faintly troubling, series of exchanges covering a 13-day period between Julia and a love-smitten suitor called “Barry,” who was blissfully unaware of her virtuality. As Foner wryly observes, it was not entirely clear whether Julia had passed a Turing test [36]5 or Barry had failed one. In conclusion, the Web represents a new context where human agents are replaced with virtual agents, and reality is superseded by hyperreality. Baudrillard [37] argues that America is now configured as a giant screen where the simulacra have become reality. This may be an exaggeration, but it is indeed the (hyper)reality of the Web. NATURE OF TIME AND SPACE

This theme comprises the way in which space-time is conceptualized, utilized, and experienced. As Kant [38] observed, space and time (space-time) are two (one) of the most basic constructs of human experience and conceptualization. It has been observed that in the postmodern world there has been a change from the archetype of linear progress—where the future is always something better than the past, to an archetype of circularity—where the past is continually recycled, reused, reinterpreted, reinvented. Similarly, our experience of space has changed—the world has become a village, the universe a microverse. These changes have constellated around a general collapse and fragmentation of time and space, a process that the Web has accelerated. NATURE OF TIME AND SPACE ON THE WEB

Cyberspace is not a matter of place or indeed, as some (e.g., [8]) have argued, space. The no-place of cyberspace is the instant—the eternal present [5], where pasts and futures are continually recycled in eternal recurrence [39]. Recent space-time compression has become implosion in cyberspace. In the computer world of the Web, the physical real is digitized and the digital becomes the real. Space collapses into presence, and the present collapses past and future into an ephemeral now. For ironically, as past and future becomes less important, the present is experienced as ever more ephemeral [5]. Speed has fueled and facilitated the implosion of space and time in all media. Yet many traditional media are unable to keep up. Thus, products are often out of date before the consumer gets them home: clothes, software, newspapers, magazines (the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, as reported on the Web and television, immediately rendered many countries’ morning papers for that day out of date and irrelevant). In contrast, on the Web the only real currency is the current. For example, one of the authors recently bought the latest version of Norton Anti-Virus, only to be confronted, on loading the software, with the warning that the virus library used to identify malicious code was out of date. However, the program also offered to download the latest library via the Web. This principle is taken one stage further by an innovative piece of software, Oil Change, which allows a person’s computer to automatically update its software via 5 A Turing test, originally conceived by the mathematician Alan Turing, is a test of whether a computer can pass as being human to another human.

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the Web—the instant an upgrade becomes available. It also undoes any changes so that the user can work with previous versions of the software if he or she chooses. The Web enables on-line, 24-hour, 365-day buying, selling, and consuming, with real-time delivery of certain products, services, and software. The Web facilitates the decoupling of local time and local space (spatio-temporal dispersal), the desynchronization of local schedules, and the synchronization of global ones. Thus, a wired person can work or teach a class simultaneously in Paris, New York, and Tokyo—while living in the Alps. The Janus-face of postmodern time is particularly apparent in cyberspace. On the one hand, the Web is the ultimate source of instant gratification—instantaneity, while on the other, the Web is the ultimate titillation, where gratification is always deferred—one click, one instant, one hypertext link away. The Web feeds desire’s ultimate object—desire. This may explain the addictive, drug-like nature of cyberspace commented on in many magazines and newspapers [32]. Surfing the Web echoes the inexorable, all-consuming board-surfers’ search for the perfect wave. Fragmentation and digitization of time and space allow recombination into novel configurations that transcend the traditional limitations of space and time. Thus, the Web is facilitating an explosion of virtual companies: teleworking (where distance is negated) replaces local-working (where space and distance predominate—i.e., commuting distance, physical location, quality of the physical offices, etc.). For example, the UK-based Internet Shopper Ltd. is run entirely through Web-mediated teleworking, boasting a staff of about 20, all of whom who work from home. Employees are based all over the UK, from the Southeast Coast to the Scottish Highlands. All staff were hired over the Internet, work via the Internet, socialize via the Internet (many of the staff have never met face-to-face), and find their next job via the Internet. Products are developed, refined, sold, and supported via the Internet. In this case, the phenomenon of teleworking has dramatically changed working patterns. Employees can structure their days as they please, working when it suits them, rather than when one is traditionally expected to be at work—a change in chronology. Furthermore, the distinction between work and holiday is becoming increasingly blurred, with employees working via cell phones while basking on the beach [40, 41]. Finally, the Web is also the ultimate source of Nietzsche’s endless return—the endless recycling, replaying, re-editing of the past [42]. Consider retro-software and retro-computer sites, where one can relive the earliest versions of space invaders, or run one’s favorite Sinclair ZX spectrum program. Furthermore, because all communication can be recorded on the Web, it is possible for people to relive on-line relationships at any time. VALUES: PARADOX, REFLEXIVITY AND PASTICHE

Postmodernism values the other, the paradox (literally that which is beyond belief), the eccentric (that which is out from the center—the decentered). Thus, the theme here is the questioning and, at times, active subversion of the normal, the orthodox, the stable, the consistent. It manifests as the active seeking of the abnormal, the paradoxical, the dysfunctional, the excluded. It is the active embracing of the other—indeed of others. On the creative side, paradox and reflexivity are actively employed in pastiche. This comprises an often-colorful, tongue-in-cheek collage style, or an ironic, self-referential mixing of codes (be these theoretical, philosophical, architectural, artistic, cinematic, literary, musical, etc.). Once again, in the Web we find these values incarnate. PARADOX, REFLEXIVITY, PASTICHE AND THE WEB

It can be argued that the Web embodies what the anthropologist Camaroff [43] calls the double visage of contemporary social phenomena. The double visage concept

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argues that many contemporary social phenomena are not experienced in a simple, unitary fashion, but in a dichotomous, paradoxical manner. Thus, for example, the Web is experienced as both a liberator (it can liberate people from the confines of traditional time and space) and tyrant (it can be addictive, encouraging compulsive behavior and alienation). It is both constructed (people build Web sites, partake in discussion groups, etc.) and constructor (the Web changes the way we interact and the way in which we construct and experience phenomena—including ourselves6). Indeed, the computer virus is to computer programs what postmodernism is to meaning (in its deconstructual forms [11]). Both actively subvert the programmer’s (author’s) intentions, yet both rely on that which is subverted for their existence, in a way that is truly parasitic. The cyberpunk culture of the Web strongly embodies this paradox [44]. On the one hand, hackers routinely indulge in seemingly malicious destructive activity, while on the other, they actively promote the free flow of information. They are thus both good and evil, and are caught in the irony of making a living from selling information that necessitates a level of secrecy and ownership [45]. They are reflexively coupled to the world they oppose—the more they hack and create viruses the more people try to protect themselves and their information. As a result, an ecology has developed in which anti-virus and security software programmers become dependent on the hackers, the parasites, for their existence: the parasites have their own parasites. Consider the phenomena of avatars used in MOOs and GMUKs. Avatars7 typically refer to pictures (photos, drawings, cartoons) or graphical objects which people use to represent themselves in cyberhabitats. They can be swapped or modified at will and, in some cases, even stolen. For the point of this discussion, it is interesting to observe that they both reveal and conceal. They can selectively amplify or mute an aspect of a person’s character, as well as allow a person to gain experiences outside their everyday selves. In such circumstances, a person can simultaneously experience his or her avatar as both self and other. Finally, most Web sites exemplify pastiche. Styles and themes are borrowed (literally—HTML and JavaScript is routinely lifted from other sites) and mixed freely. Spoof sites, which parody other (typically mainstream) sites, are common (e.g., there are many spoof, irreverent “Spice Girl” sites). ATTITUDE TOWARDS META-NARRATIVES: ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM

Postmodernism embodies a general incredulity towards, and deconstruction of, modernist meta-narratives that claim to offer universal goals, rules, truths, or knowledge— and the social institutions that claim to produce them. Examples of these meta-narratives include communism, capitalism, psychoanalysis, and positivism, not to mention a myriad of other social, religious, political, and scientific grand theories. Anti-foundationalism is general antipathy towards and rejection of orthodoxy (author-doxy) and the establishment. This is the antidote to a theory of everything (from the theory of everything, to the “anything of theory”). Indeed, in the project of dissolving all narratives and metatheories into a diffuse universe of language games, postmodern deconstruction ends up (despite the best intentions of some of its more radical practitioners) reducing knowledge and meaning to a rubble of signifiers [5]. Signifiers (text, images, sounds, etc.) no longer point to the foundational signified, but merely to the infinite regression of other signifiers. 6 Foucault’s [46] notion of self-fashioning (souci de soi) is one perspective from which to explore the social construction of imposed and self constructed identities on the Web. 7 From the Sanskrit avatara, meaning “a passing down” (ava ⫽ down ⫹ tara ⫽ to pass over).

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The Web embodies the anti-foundational philosophy of postmodernism in a number of ways. First, the Web effectively has no controlling center or hierarchy.8 The medium is radically decentered and heterarchical, peripheral, and horizontal—no foundational body controls the medium. Second, the paradigm upon which it is based is not the traditional one-to-many of traditional broadcast media, but a many-to-many model in which no one controls the message [29]. Third, the medium is not stable—it is evolving at an unprecedented rate and in unpredictable directions—the ground is in motion [47]. There is no foundational control and no one architect, rather it is created by the millions of interactions of all constitutional elements. This indicates that the Web embodies the emergent properties of complex systems [48]. Indeed, the logic of the Web is quite different from that of the physical world: linear, causal logic is replaced by associative, aleatory logic. Hypertext and hypermedia free the play of signs that have traditionally constituted writing. A hypermedium is not a closed work with a stable meaning, but an open fabric of heterogeneous traces and associates that are in the process of constant revision and supplementation [23]. The traditional author’s voice is undermined and subverted, and consequently the traditional hierarchy between author and reader is overthrown. Each reader creates his or her own text and own meaning. Not surprisingly, the issue of copyright and intellectual property law has become a major issue on the Web [49]. Sites like Total News manage to use other news providers’ proprietary content for their own ends while avoiding a breach of copyright laws [50]. The manipulation, editing, threading, and recombination of text, images, sound, and video is de rigueur in the medium [15]. Indeed, the traditional information-as-property notion is being severely undermined by the Web, with alternatives ranging from the anarchistic (information as subversion) to the utopian (information as sharing) being offered as substitutes [45]. In the fastest growing segments of MOOs and GMUKs, people interact under a thematic or spatial umbrella, such as critical theory, or a multi-roomed building. However, most importantly in this context, there is no game or competition, other than spontaneous role-playing and symbolic exchange. In short, there is no overall purpose or goal, no rules or regulation. Individuals create their own rules, reasons and relations— none are pre-specified [49].

Pulling the Threads Together In the modern high-tech world, there is an ongoing effacement of the distinction between psyche and the environment, between waking and dreaming, between the conscious and the subconscious (e.g., [51]). When these important boundaries are blurred, people start to lose a sense of themselves. We argue that the Web dramatically speeds up this process. The hallucinogenic realm of cyberspace embodies the sudden, hyperreal dynamics of the dream. The conventional rules of time, space, logic, and identity are suspended, facilitating primary process thinking and experiencing.9 Cyber8 Although any one body or organization does not control the Web, there are certain players who perform pivotal administrative roles. For example, Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) controls top-level domains. However, due to a download of corrupt zone files on July 18, 1997 to other ISPs (Internet Service Providers), there are widespread (and vociferous) calls for the process to be decentralized. 9 Since Freud, psychologists have observed that the subconscious mind operates in a very different way to that of the conscious. Primary process is the term Freud [24] gave to the way in which the subconscious mind works.

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technology acts as a vast Rorschach inkblot—not a passive one—a dynamic and, critically, a reflexive one. The surrealism, simultaneity, and instantaneous change that occur in dreams are embodied in the Web: the conditions of our subconscious are embodied in cyberspace. Freud [24] was the first to observe that in the subconscious there is no time, and without time there is no space. The most frightening thing about the space-time implosion of the Web is that it exposes us to forces within ourselves as nothing else ever has. Cyberspace is the storm of our own being—but in dreams begin responsibility [51]. If modernism is quintessentially a product of the rational, conscious mind, then postmodernism is the invasion of the subconscious. The cyber-technology of the Web is facilitating the confluence of the two. This view may in part explain why, on the one hand, there has been such resistance to—and vitriol directed against—postmodernism [52] and, on the other, the passionate attempts to dominate, regulate, and control the Web [53]. Unregulated cyberspace is a frightening place because in it we meet ourothers; postmodernism is a disturbing movement because in it we look at ourselves in the mirror—and find we are not there.

Discussion and Conclusion As people create technology, so technology creates the world: this dialectic process is emergent in outcome. Reid [54] charts the nascent, formative days of the Web, postulating that business and wider social interactions may be redefined by possibly the most discontinuous technological innovations of the last century. We argue that the impact of the Web on markets and market organizations is, and will increasingly be, profound. For some organizations (e.g., Amazon.com and CDNow), the Web is already the dominant forum for communication and transaction. The Information Age organization and its stakeholders inhabit the Web. Organizational research domains (such as consumer behavior, organizational design, and information systems) are based in investigations of corporations and stakeholders interacting in North American industrial age settings. The Web eradicates much of this theory, just as the disintegration of the Soviet Union swept away established foreign policy. Now, we need to develop theories of management that incorporate widely disparate assumptions and values (cf. [55]) and a networked cyber society. The Web confronts modernism because it is a major discontinuity that perturbs the very foundation of established management thought. The dominance of broadcast (push technology) has been usurped by the Web (pull technology), and the receiver has taken control of the timing and content of messages from the sender [56]. In the world of advertising, the control of time and space has shifted hands. The trend to decustomize service [57] has been reversed as the Web facilitates mass customization [58]. Services are being fragmented to support one-to-one interaction. Emergent firms, the anti-foundationalists, can threaten the establishment within months of gestation (e.g., Netscape and Microsoft, and Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble). On an organizational level, impact of information technology was foreseen some years ago. For example, Malone [59–61], exploring the impact of electronic communications networks on markets and organizations, proposed that information technology would shrink companies by promoting market-based trading, trading in intangibles (such as bandwidth and pollution rights), and the decentralization of organizations. The Web has helped manifest these predictions and dramatically accelerate the associated processes. Increasingly, through the use of the Web, organizations are becoming radically decentralized, radically networked, and essentially virtual in nature (cf. [62]).

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On a group level, there is a dialectical interaction between technology and organizational processes, in which each shapes, and is shaped, by the other (e.g., [63–66]). This has major implications, as the Web is rapidly becoming the major medium through which people communicate, interact, and make decisions. Moreover, for some the Web is the medium or mirror in which people increasingly create their self identities—not only in self-obvious communities such as programmers or hackers (e.g., [67]), but in the wider “wired” community (e.g., [21]). The virtual world of the Web has enabled individuals to experience and create other aspects of themselves. However, such is the relative ease with which these identities can be created, that they become more fluid and transient in nature, with people reinventing themselves at a greater rate and degree. Similarly, on a collective level, the Web is changing the nature of community. On the one hand, it has facilitated the fragmentation of traditional communities, while on the other it has enabled the dedifferentiation of individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures into Web communities or cyber-tribes. These communities are, in comparison with traditional communities, far more fluid in both composition and collimation (cf. [68]). Finally, the interaction between technology and people has profound implications for the natural world. As the Web impacts and changes individuals, communities, and markets, so these changed entities feedback and impact on the nature and direction of technology and its concomitant impact on the natural world. From linking scientists and instruments from around the word, through changing the nature and process of academic publication, to involving the wider community in the practice and process of technology, the Web is beginning to have its impact. One specific example will suffice—genetic engineering—a technology that is already proving to have profound and irreversible pleiotropic effects on the natural world [69]. In addition to linking researchers furthering this technology, the Web has enabled a disparate alliance of alternative voices to coalesce into a potentially major force expressing concern and seeking to influence the direction that this technology takes. One prominent example is the Prince of Wales’s Internet discussion forum, of which the British Government is increasingly being forced to take note [70]. The Web is a confusing place. Postmodernism is a confusing movement. We argue that the Web is perhaps the quintessential disembodiment of postmodernity. Moreover, by employing the frameworks and themes that postmodernism offers, our understanding of the socio-technical phenomenon of the Web, its problems, and potentials is enhanced.

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