Postmodern Theory and Internet George Ritzer

Thus, for example, sites on the Internet that users visit individually can, when 

taken together, rise to the top when links are analyzed by algorithms such as those 

used by Google. More dramatically, as in the Arab Spring, powerless individuals 

can come together, via Facebook and Twitter, for example, and form a powerful 

revolutionary group.

Baudrillard (1983/1990: 59) is also concerned with the obscene where everything 

is made visible, broadcast, and so forth. He describes the society of his day as 

involving “the rampant obscenity of uninterrupted social commentary”. He also 

discusses “the pornography of information and communication” (Baudrillard/1990: 

69) where we are “buried alive under information” (Baudrillard, 1980-1985: 90). 

If Baudrillard took that position three decades ago, imagine his reaction to the 

Internet world of the second decade of the 21st century.

Baudrillard’s most important anticipation of the current reality lies in his notion 

of symbolic exchange which involves the general and reversible processes of 

“taking and returning, giving and receiving…[the] cycle of gifts and countergifts” 

(Baudrillard, 1976/1993: 136). Many observers have described Web 2.0 in 

similar terms including Tapscott and Williams (2006) who discuss the culture of 

generosity that exists in that context. Baudrillard anticipates the world of the free 

(Anderson, 2009) that has been created on the Internet, especially Web 2.0. In that 

free domain, we do see something approaching a world dominated by symbolic 

exchange. Those involved offer gifts—additions to a Wikipedia entry, sharing a 

file, adding code to Linux, etc.—and in return they receive various gifts including 

the knowledge Wikipedia has to offer, files from others, and the use of Linux.  

This symbolic exchange also has another of the characteristics Baudrillard 

associates with it- reciprocity on the Internet is not limited to a specific exchange 

of goods, but is rather continuous and unlimited.

The postmodern ideas employed here, and many others, are ideally suited to  

an analysis of the Internet and Web 2.0. In fact, in many cases they seem to be  

more applicable today than they did when they were first created decades ago.  

In many ways, at least some of the postmodern social theorists can be said to have 

anticipated today’s (and even more tomorrow’s) realities and provided us a toolkit 

full of concepts to analyze that world.

Of course, we should not be satisfied with extant concepts, but rather we should 

use them in interaction with the new realities to create a much broader set of 

concepts and theories that will not only help us today, but will, hopefully, put 

us in a better position to analyze coming changes on the Internet and in social 

networking.

Postmodern Theory and Internet ……………………………………………….……………… George Ritzer

https://georgeritzer.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/postmodern-theory-and-internet/

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Capitalism is making way for the age of free 

Jeremy Rifkin

Karl Marx spent a lifetime trying to uncover what he suspected were the deep 

contradictions that drove the capitalist system forward but that would one day 

lead to its demise. Although his search revealed a number of important ancillary 

contradictions, his focus on the relationship between the means of production, 

surplus value and alienated labour kept him from unmasking an even deeper 

paradox at the heart of the system.

In a capitalist market, governed by the invisible hand of supply and demand, 

sellers are constantly searching for new technologies to increase productivity, 

allowing them to reduce the costs of producing their goods and services so  

they can sell them cheaper than their competitors, win over consumers and 

secure sufficient profit for their investors. Marx never asked what might happen 

if intense global competition some time in the future forced entrepreneurs to 

introduce ever more efficient technologies, accelerating productivity to the 

point where the marginal cost of production approached zero, making goods 

and services “priceless” and potentially free, putting an end to profit and 

rendering the market exchange economy obsolete. But that’s now beginning  

to happen.

Over the past decade millions of consumers have become prosumers, producing 

and sharing music, videos, news, and knowledge at near-zero marginal cost and 

nearly for free, shrinking revenues in the music, newspaper and book-publishing 

industries.

Some of the US’s leading economists are waking up to the paradox. Lawrence 

Summers, former US treasury secretary, and J Bradford DeLong, professor of 

economics at the University of California, Berkeley, addressed this in August 

2001, in a speech delivered before the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. 

Summers and DeLong focused their presentation on the new communication 

technologies that were already reducing the marginal (per-unit) cost of 

producing and sending information goods to near zero.

They began by acknowledging that “the most basic condition for economic 

efficiency: [is] that price equal marginal cost”, and further conceded that “with 

information goods the social marginal cost of distribution is close to zero”. 

They then went to the crux of the problem. “If information goods are to be 

Capitalism is making way for the age of free ………………………………………………… Jeremy Rifkin

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/31/capitalism-age-of-free-internet-of-things-economic-shift#comments

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