bobgarlitz

Intrigued by that Extinction Timeline website I got to pondering things about big social and historical change.

I was watching a short clip of Jesse Jackson trying to opine about Obama—and I was thinking of how Jesse looked like his world had slipped away from him and he knew he/we no longer lived in the world we used to know—-(maybe)

also today I thought—well the standard term for this for our generation has been “paradigm shift” thanks to Kuhn.

So when did “Everyone” know “we” had shifted from Modernism to Post-Modernism?? I recall some one making that claim when Philip Johnson of Glass house fame gained some (more) notoriety by designing late in his life a building for AT&T in NY that harkened back to nazi-classicism but with gratuitous chippendale furniture geegaws topping off this skyscraper and decorating other aspects of the facade—i.e. the old “form follows function” (modernism) was officially dead.

Phil agreed with me. He emailed back

Yup. A description of that AT&T building in some mag was, as I recall, the first time I ever heard “post-modern.” Maybe I heard it before then, but I don’t remember that. And ever since then, I’ve been trying to figure out what the fuck the term “post-modern” really means. Are we still post modern or are we now post-post-modern so that we can look forward to a future of a infinitive number of “posts.”……..P

PS. I think the frustrating thing for the Jesse Jacksons of the world is that the phenomena that they are concerned about haven’t changed. It’s just that people have grown tired of hearing about it and want to believe it’s over and hear about something else. As Neil Posner/Posman(?) wrote in the 70s, we’re “entertaining ourselves to death.”

Then I replied on email

sometimes you have to love the new idiocy of our brave new Googleworld—because our message chain
mentions Johnson’s glass house—-the google algorithm “in charge” put this Ad at the top of the page —  “

“Quality Glass Houses - www.parishconservatories.com - Building quality bespoke glass houses for homes throughout the USA”