Hypermodernity

In the 21st Century, we are presented with an overabundance of events that we are innately programmed to try and understand (Buchanan, 1999). This overabundance, according to Augé, combined with the limited capacity to understand an overwhelming number of events at once, sets us up for failure, which Augé terms as a ‘crisis of meaning’ (Buchanan, 1999). Multiple signifying universes that demand our attention also confuse the terms local and global. Buchanan presents the example of a television in a living room; “is the local the living room and the global what’s on TV? Or is the TV the local because it is in the living room and the living room global because via the TV it is connected to the whole world?” (1999). What Augé is actually trying to address is that it is not necessarily that there is a crisis of meaning, but it the loss of meaning through instant telecommunications in the digital era that makes us feel as though we need to impose a new meaning of the world (Hill, 2010; Buchanan, 1999). This feeling of needing to imbue the world with meaning is what is causing the crisis, not the idea that there is a lack of meaning, to begin with (Buchanan, 1999). Hill and Buchanan mention that “What is new is not that the world lacks meaning, or has little meaning, or less than it used to have; it is that we seem to feel an explicit and intense daily need to give it meaning: to give meaning to the world, not just some village or lineage” (Hill, 2010:2482: Buchanan, 1999). Notion…