...could one of you offer a tentative definition of modernity? I mean other than the ideology of progress based on technical progress and a neo-classical/function-based aesthetic ....
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I'm having a hard time composing a precise definition...which is probably all for the best since others have no doubt already crafted descriptions more comprehensive than anything I can cook up.
Perhaps there's another way...
When I think of modernity in its present state I don't think exclusively about the idea of technical progress, though this is now a given, nor of the 'function-based aesthetic' though this is also a fundamental element.
I think of that moment years ago when I sat in a darkened theater watching **Blade Runner**, an adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's story **Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?**.
There, on screen, were nearly all of my childhood fantasies of an improved world: the subtly advanced computer technics, the synthetic life forms, the widely dispersed space colonies. The odd thing was, all these achievements were parts of a fictional society that was even less coherent than the real one I found myself in.
On one level, this was unimportant, just a (then) somewhat obscure science fiction film that melted cyberpunk (a word that so quickly moved in and out of common use...which seems fitting) ideas on top of P.K. Dick strangeness. But there was another level -- a new idea (new to me at least) was being visually presented: technical progress, and the accumulation of knowledge doesn't inexorably lead to utopia but only a modification of current imperfections. This seems trivial and self-evident to sophisticates: of course, we say, of course. But it overturns deeply held beliefs -- ideas that surround us like the air we breathe and rarely detect.
This can be re-phrased: the foundation of early modernity, the idea of the perfectibility of humanity through science, liberalized faith and ever sophisticated technics, has fallen away. The refinement of machinery and technique will continue, the film said, but it won't lead to any place in particular.
The destination disappeared.
The old certainties -- that god cares for you and the universe was designed around human needs -- are retreating. The newer certainties -- that we could, through deep study and applied knowledge, improve ourselves, make ourselves nobler and more peaceful as our techniques become more sophisticated -- are also decaying.
We're left adrift, abandoned by the ancient gods and betrayed by our powerful tools which are bound by the limits of our imagination.
Ardent religionists, feeling this drift, fight a rearguard action against uncertainty by shouting louder and louder that old ideas are the unquestioned will of god and must be universally obeyed. Technophobics long to retreat to simplification havens and dream of the technosphere's collapse. Others, perhaps the majority, just try to get by without too much ideological freight.
....
In any event, this is only a sketch, a hesitant beginning. The topic's immense and important components are still forming, it's difficult to pin down. I'm sure others (if anyone's reading) will disagree and offer an alternative.
.d.
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