Supermodernity

It is a society that seeks out of this mess of commodity, constantly seeks authenticity, but can never quite get there. The fact of the matter is that the very search for authenticity, for anti-corpratisim, is being commodified as we speak. It is becoming suppressed just like the Seattle punk movement. Independent coffeeshops are sprouting up all over the place. Stores that supply vintage goods are raising their prices. The same laws of style apply, the same reules of interactiion. Newness is becoming absorbed, neutralized, romantisized and approriated.

Those with greater social, political, and economic power can easily integrate their company's objective into any cultural movement and raise it up on a hill for all of the country...all of the world to see. This symbol, subsequentely worshipped so far and wide, can be taken down as readily as it was put up, and then entire movement will quickly go down with it.

Rabindranath Tagore, a 19th century Indian citizen and Nobel Laurate once said that "Most inaccessible of all is man, hidden behind his own self, and with no measure in time and space. He has an inner life that is revealed only through a communion of minds."

If the reapproriation of old values, ideologies, and images is what constitutes supermodernism, then to use a poem from another time seems quite approriate. This poem, originally written in Bengali, seems to transcend the situation of its origin and permeates what concerns us today. It is authentic after all.

As the world's population enters into a more highly technically concentrated arena, the cultural constructions of space and communication are changing.

Cultural constructions of space are are being influenced by new technologies that facilitate communication. The cell phone is one such device that is making cultural constructions of space different. A new system of manners as well as nonverbal and verbal communication is arising to absorb and normalize the existence of this new device.

My thesis on Cell Phones and Their Technosocial Sites of Engagement examines those changes and the experience of and negotiation of space before and after the cultural implementation and adoption of the mobile phone as an extension of the individual.