With this one amazing tool, one has all the components to make an infinite number of new recipes from the trash bins and treasure troves of the modern era just past. All these and more are literally at one’s fingertips.
But it goes without saying that, as with virtually any phenomenon, there is a dark side to all this wondrous technology. Just as the modern era produced nuclear fission and the specter of nuclear annihilation, so our new digital technologies have helped globalize warfare and made terrorism into a sometimes remotely controlled endeavor. Our pomo enemies often wear no uniforms and eschew the now-quaint code of traditional warfare; one leader’s word from a remote hideout in the desert can be spread to billions of followers; propaganda and The Big Lie (e.g. the Holocaust never happened) can be disseminated like a virus instantaneously throughout the globe via the blogosphere; one cartoon can incite millions to riot; and political pundits can make or break a candidate overnight with one cleverly ferreted-out secret or snarky meta-analysis.
One other facet of pomo which is both beautiful and sometimes devastatingly ugly is that it creates the potential for anyone to be an instant “expert” and cultural evaluator — or pundit and critic, if you will — and every voice has the potential to be heard by many others far and wide. There are an infinite amount of modern and premodern ingredients at our disposal to create an unlimited amount of derivatively original pomo recipes based on unoriginal ingredients.
Bob Dylan endures as one of the most audaciously innovative songwriters of the sixties, but his work has been arguably improved and refined by the minions of fellow artists who have covered him—most with benefit of superior production technologies and better singing voices. Thus, "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a very different song as performed by Dylan, unaccompanied save for his trademark acoustic guitar and harmonica, than the same composition created anew by the Byrds, with its heavenly vocal harmonies and innovative guitar riffs. Hearing Johnny Cash's rendition of Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" or Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt" is the kind of musical revelation that can make even the most jaded pomo pop afficianado sit up and take notice.
In any event, there’s a lot that to be said about pomo, and I fully intend to do so in this series, “On Postmodernism.” Unlike eras past, our pomo sensibilities and digital technologies allow us to more coolly evaluate the modern era just past juxtaposed with the pomo era as it unfolds before our eyes. In any case, a much more irreverent, breezy, tongue in cheek—in other words, pomo—introduction to pomo can be found in part 1 of this series, "Pomo for Dummies," but future posts will go into much more detail than the limitations of space or attention span merits here.
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