Best of Week: Modernism and Postmodernism

This week during Humanities, we spent multiple class periods talking about the topic of Modernism and Postmodernism. These movements were all together about 150 years. Modernism from 1850 to 1945 and Postmodernism from 1945 to today. We talked about all the differences between the two and you split it up into five different categories: the individual, worldview, memory, art, and truth. A specific detail stood out to me though. The idea of "The System" really blew me away.

You defined "The System" as a global network of networks. You also explained how us as individuals really depend on The System more than ever before. During the Modernism period, there wasn't even a system. There was no technology that brought the world together as a whole. There was nothing available for someone from China, for example, to contact someone in New York without leaving their country and talking to them face to face. Now we live in a world where we can't live without The System. The Internet has a huge part in that. With Facebook and email and other social networking sites, a person can contact anyone they would like. All they need is a internet connection. Cell phones also are a huge part of The System. These allow people to contact one another through text, or calling, and now you can go on Facebook with your phone! This really overwhelmed me because I never realized how dependent we are on these things now. Us teenagers can't go hours without being on our cellphones, or a computer. This dependency is going to grow even more too as the years pass. My fear is the next generation is going to rely on The System to survive. If they live a couple of days without it, they wouldn't be able to function or operate as a normal human being. I want the world to evolve more in technology but I also don't want the dependency evolving more as well.

The idea of The System really blew me away because I had never thought of us as being so dependent on the technology and methods of communication we have today. Thinking to the future really scared me too because, realizing how dependent we are now with this technology, how will the next generation turn out? The idea of the The System really got me thinking, and I still am thinking about it. I am also trying to slowly deprive myself of all these networking sites and my phone too, to get less of a dependency on them. I don't want technology to rule my life, I want my mind to make the decisions.