A postmodernist study of the internet

• Main Author: S.H. Heng,
• Format: Article
• Published: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 1998
• Online Access: http://journalarticle.ukm.my/4163/; http://pkukmweb.ukm.my/penerbit/jdem53-7.htm

This paper argues is that the activities associated with the Internet are organisational and societal activities taking place within a given historical context. As such explanations of these activities can profit from sociological theories such as postmodernism which can be seen as a reaction to some signal failures of modernism and the modernity project. Postmodernist thinking reflects both a sense of imposing crisis and a feeling that the modernist system of ideas no longer suffices. The sacrosanct notion of the privileged role of the enlightenment, rationality and reason has lost credibility. It is very much a socio-cultural and philosophical system of thoughts which sprouts in a post-industrial society. The relevant elements of postmodernism used here are: (a) power is diffuse, (b) there is no grand theory to make sense of reality; (c) the world is fragmented and chaotic, (d) information technology has an ambivalent character. It is argued that postmodernism offers a fruitful way of understanding and explaining the range of possibilities and challenges that accompany the advent of the Internet.