notes

A Decade in Ret­ro­spect | varnelis.net:
Sub­mit­ted by admin on 31 Decem­ber, 2009 — 15:37

Never mind that the decade really ends in a lit­tle over a year, it’s time to take stock of it. Today’s post looks back at the decade just past while tomorrow’s will look at the decade to come.

As I observed before, this decade is marked by atem­po­ral­ity. The great­est symp­tom of this is our inabil­ity to name the decade and, although com­men­ta­tors have tried to dub it the naugh­ties, the aughts, and the 00s (is that pro­nounced the ooze?), the decade remains, as Paul Krug­man sug­gests, a Big Zero, and we are unable to peri­odize it. This is not just a mat­ter of lin­guis­tic dis­com­fort, its a reflec­tion of the atem­po­ral­ity of net­work cul­ture. Jean Bau­drillard is proved right. His­tory, it seems, came to an end with the mil­len­nium, which was a count­down not only to the end of a mil­len­nium but also to the end of mean­ing itself. Per­haps, the Daily Mil­ton­ian sug­gested, we didn’t have a nam”

(Via .)

Tweet this!