How are we to make sense of the Web and our involvement in it? This issue is no light matter, for how we make sense of what was, and is, delimits what will be. Thus, as more and more organizations establish a presence on the Web, the question of how to exploit the new medium presents challenges to practitioners and academics alike. How should economic and symbolic activity be conducted and conceptualized? How can we make sense of the new medium and our involvement in it? Different assumptions about this new medium will result in diverse activities-and the accompanying creation of different futures, and for businesses, varying degrees of marketing success or failure. This chapter explores the phenomenon of the Web using themes characterizing postmodernism, which is a collection of practices and thoughts that characterizes the information age. Postmodernism offers unique insights into information-rich contexts such as the Web.
Current media views and perspectives on the Web vary from dismissing it as a fad, to acclaiming it as the most significant contribution to communication since Gutenberg's invention of movable type. Trying to make sense of the Web is no simple matter, yet as an increasing number of organizations establish a presence in the medium, the need becomes pressing. Traditional models of business are unlikely to prove effective. While trends such as changing technology, commercialization, globalization, and demographics are important in understanding the Web, they represent only half the story.
More fundamental shifts can be uncovered by changing to a higher level of abstraction, by shifting from elements to relationships. Such has been the work of a divergent body of thinkers from artists to philosophers, historians to scientists, whose fragmented works have come to be known as postmodern. Indeed, postmodernism is seen as the label for thinking that resonates most strongly with the Information Age, just as modernism was the philosophy that embodied the Industrial Age. While there is little agreement on, or indeed collective understanding of, what constitutes postmodernism, various broad, overlapping themes are discernible.
In this chapter, 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. Anti-foundationalism, pastiche, and pluralism all question the modernist love of the one right answer (theory, way, view, voice, etc.). Although present in all media, we argue that it is the Web that most typifies postmodernist thought. This may be an important insight, for virtual realms (of which the Web is perhaps the most important), comprise perhaps t he greatest marketing and organizational challenge and opportunity of the late twentieth century. Moreover, it was marketing practitioners who were among the first to embrace and explore the Web. Indeed, some argue that, after a technological medium, the Web is primarily a marketing medium.
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