Star and death of postmodern

“Every year, the world budget for advertising is $ 500 billion. The UN study showed that even 10% of this amount would be enough to reduce hunger on earth. ” ("99 cents").

In fact, the Begbeder is inand, “feeding” the hunger for a hundred dollars a year in the calculation per person. However, this is not about that. Turn on the TV and wait for the first advertising unit. With a probability of 99%, you will see the next clone of “Aunt Asi who arrived” - and the clone will tell you how the new washing powder is monstrously effective, how beautiful its new packaging is, and how enchantingly new prices are beneficial.

The fact is that washing powders and detergents traditionally occupy the upper line in the list of the most advertised goods. They occupy about 10% of the advertising time - it is for the Begbeeder 50 billion. They cannot be fed half the starving - but this is noticeably most of the Ukrainian budget. Manufacturers of powder-and not some Microsoft-stably exist in the first or second position in the ranking of the largest advertisers.

What is the reason for such a tendency to a white erasing substance to self -Piara? About the same with which the epic advertising battles of two identical brown soda. In fact, the last technological leap in the washing business happened forty years ago - with the introduction of enzymes. Fund -phase powders appeared two dozen years ago - however, this was only due to the deterioration of erasing qualities for the sake of ecology. As a result, the technological level of all large producers of the powder is exactly the same - with equal cost, the quality characteristics are completely identical. Megaporoshkov, who are radically better than before, and excessively surpass competitors for the same money, is simply not observed in nature. Without high -quality superiority, manufacturers should bet on advertising, marketing tricks, indulge in branding and sophisticated with the “design”. In short, the consumer is immersed in postmodern hyperreality. Nothing embodies the essence of postmodern as a television pack of washing powder.

At the same time, the powder is an extreme, but typical example. The economy of the postmodern era outside the electronics and biotic is a world of packages.

The technological “wave” of the 80s, which formed the current world, was quite weak-and at the same time the “electronic” surge occurred in the middle of the swamp, where the world has successfully crawled since the late 60s. Compare, for example, the fortieth anniversary between the 1930s and 1970s, and the same period between the 1970 and 2010. In the first case, we see the appearance of nuclear weapons and atomic energy, access to space, the spread of reactive aviation, the appearance of the first computers, lasers, masters and masses less striking innovations. Between the 1980 and 2010s, such violent progress was by no means observed.

At the same time, the restructuring of the 40-60s was frankly inferior in scale to technological jumps associated with the first and second industrial revolutions. Between 1880 and 1920, the world got almost everything that makes up the backbone of the current civilization-an airplane, a car, radio, a edson light bulb, an electric refrigerator, a tram, a trolley, a trolley and an electric locomotive, a ship, cinema, a tank, fully artificial (not based on natural) polymers, practical automatic weapons, antibiotics, x-rays. The sound recording was invented in 1878, the phone in 1876, the “classic” television in 1923. Reality, as we know her, was formed precisely when it was finalized by a file in the 1940s-1960s, and at best, slightly tinted after the mid-80s.

The whole post -industrial economy, in fact, is only a side effect of either low rates of progress as such or a situation of a sharp “vapor reset”. If no one has a technological advantage, there is a kingdom of marketing in all its violent manifestations. If you do not have anything really outstanding technically, you just have to sell “dreams” and try to rip off money from the consumer for a label.

At the same time, the marketing crutch is only the most spectacular detail of the “packaging economy”. If you cannot offer anything exclusive for exclusive money, you can only hit financial speculations, where there is so far so far. From here - and not at all from the whip of the Fed - a gigantic inflating of the financial sector. Hence de -industrialization - for in the pursuit of elusive profit, industry drifts to China. In parallel, medieval logic triumphs - "If we cannot change the gun, we will change the person who holds it." Hence the flowering of HR management and all the horrors of coaching, training and teambuilding.

At the same time, a huge part of the “creative class”, so noticeable in current reality, serves the marketing “crutch” and HR support. A huge part of the average in general - serves a hypertrophied financial sector.

The roots of postmodern culture are in exactly the same ground. The “official” start of postmodern coincided with the sliding from the technological peak of the middle of the century (1969), and its golden time came by the beginning of the 80s.

The denial of rationality and the very fact of the presence of rational truth (there are only “generally accepted judgments”), the denial of progress is a completely ordinary consequence of the low pace of technological development. The trivial quote, allusias and eclecticism are equally trivial. The world generates new meanings, changing financially. If the habitat in its basic characteristics is unchanged, it remains only to operate with old meanings - mixing and shaking. The "death of the author" becomes inevitable. This is practically a return to the medieval realities of anonymous and secondary creativity.

Such is our world - in our own way, quite comfortable. However, he had to live no more than a decade. Right in front of me on the shelf there is a biology textbook, bought ten years ago - and in these ten years it has become out of about a third. Technological and scientific progress, after decades of stagnation, is again spinning. The directions, the start of which was given in the 50-60s, reach maturity. Forecasts are again lagging behind reality.

This is barely aware of us-our technological time seemed to froze in the 80s-but this is an objective fact.

You can look at the results of rabotized machines organized by DARPA. In 2004, none of the 15 cars reached the finish line, and the maximum achievement was reduced to seven miles-from 132 planned. In 2005, 4 cars from 23 passed the entire distance. The competitions of 2007 were transferred to a specially built town. In 2009, the speed of movement of robots in the "populated" urban environment reached 50 km/h. In 2010, robotic cars were by no means the most advanced Italy swept through the entire Eurasia from Parma to Shahai, and the German “devices” normally moved in general traffic along the streets of Berlin.

At the same time, such agility is not limited to a purely electronic "enclave". In 2004, the technology of “mental management” and reading of thoughts was in its infancy (the first experiments-in the late 90s). Now technologies have appeared to “extract” arbitrary words from the brain. The visual image was counted from the brain in 2008.

In 1999, hypersonic direct-flow reactive engines, potentially capable of reaching 17 sound speeds, operated 70 seconds on hydrogen. Now they work twice as long on kerosene - despite the fact that it was considered for a long time that this was generally impossible.

There is also a bizarre phenomenon - the mass outcome of the heroes of the network and electronics into space. The spectrum of “astronauts” extends from Elon Mask, one of the creators of the PayPal system, who sent the first private spacecraft to the orbit, to the developer of Doom and Quake John Karmak, who sent the missile to the border of the near Cosmos, having only seven workers behind the soul in an appendix to the space.

And this is only one of hundreds of promising directions. In the next thirty years, the world will change in the same way as it changed between 1940 and 1970. Although in the long run the tendency to reduce the pace of the NTP will inevitably continue - we are still waiting for a new technological wave, and it will be magnificent.

The world of postmodern will be dead in a dozen years. What will replace him? It will be a world of new rationality (although not quite classic). It will be a world where the Economy of Begbeder and washing powder will sink into oblivion. This will be the industrial world - where production will certainly dominate the financial sector. This will be a world where the most “industrial” will be the most developed countries.

This, thus, will be about the formation of a “new proletariat”. At the same time, the mass of the classic middle class will decrease. The creative class in its current form will no longer have a place in the new reality - the specific gravity and influence of the current heroes of the day will go down. The reality will be mechanized and rational - and it will require a completely different creative.

At the same time, it will be the world of unambiguous truths, rigid dividing lines - in many ways much less tolerant and much more severe.

The era of postmodern ends - neo -modod is coming, or, if you like, postpostoderm.