Postmodernity

Postmodernity is a social and political condition, distinct from modernity, closely related to postmodernism. For social, political, technological, and/or economic determinists, it is a major cause of the emergence of postmodernism and postmodern culture. For others, it is a mode of society which go hand in hand with postmodernism. Postmodernity may be a reason for some to choose postmodernism as a way of life.

Postmodernism is an epistemological, aesthetic, ethical, and/or cultural attitude which is distinctive from that of modern society.

The defining characteristics of postmodernity are not unanimously agreed. Yet there are certain number of characteristics that are frequently mentioned by many.

In politics,

• the end of cold war
• increasingly diverse and complex landscape of various groups religious, ethnic, and others, sharing a political agenda.

In economy,

• globalization, or the increasing volume of trade among countries
• rise of information economy, or increase in information industries[?], information-related occupations, and informatization of production processes[?] in the economy
• increased ties between information industries and competitive advantage of a country or a company
• decline of mass production
• increased role of branding and other semiological dimensions of the goods, as opposed to the pragmatic usefulness

In technology,

• increasing role of information and communications technologies in society
• emergence digital technologies which allow nearly perfect copying of digital information with ease
• rise of information networks, especially the Internet
• improvement in media technologies in making realistic presentiations of things.

See also:

References:

From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: the Local/Global Context by Ihab Hassan (www.ihabhassan.com/postmodernism_to_postmodernity.htm)