Book Review: The Postmodern Condition, A Report on Knowledge

by Jean-Francious Lyotard

For decades this has been regarded as a seminal text on postmodernism, of primary interest to philosophy and culture theorists. But Lyotard has proven remarkably prescient about information technology and its impact on society. So prescient that I would recommend this book as a standard text on the global changes taking place in response to technological innovation. Information Technology consultants, strategists, CEO’s, Parliamentarians, Ministers, everyone who needs to understand how the world is changing should read this book. It is of particular relevance though to those who are wrestling with the role and shape of universities in a quickly changing world.

Perhaps as surprising as the Report’s prescience in raising and considering these issues at the close of the 1970’s is it has been ignored by those trying to understand the social, economic and legal consequences of technological change. The hype of the Information Society, Knowledge Economy and Digital Revolution failed to exhibit the depth of analysis in the Report. Many of the hypsters of the dawning Age of High Tech are not simply journalists who might be forgiven as indulging a professional weakness, but (putative) experts; economists, management consultants, information technology professionals.

(Hypsters: a neologism coined on this blog to connote the self consciously hip attitudes of both amateurs and professionals given to hyping).

Its not as if I am suggesting that the hypsters should have arrived at such analyses themselves, merely that read the Report. The Report itself is only 64 pages in the English translation which I have read.

Consider one remarkable passage:

“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already and will continue to be, a major -perhaps the major stake in the worldwide competition for power…..However the perspective I have outlined above is not as simple as I have made it appear. For the mercantilization of knowledge is bound to affect the privilege nation-states have enjoyed, and still enjoy, with respect to the production and distribution of learning. The notion that learning falls within the purview of the State, as the brain or mind of society, will become more and more outdated with the increasing strength of the opposing principle, according to which society exists and progresses only if the messages circulating within it are rich in information and easy to decode. The ideology of communicational ‘transparency’ which goes hand in hand with the commercialization of knowledge will begin to perceive the State as a factor or opacity and ‘noise’.”

In a few paragraphs Lyotard has outlined two of the critical factors which have shaped the last decade, and will probably shape the next, the role of knowledge in the global economy as a strategic resource like no other, and the tension between bureaucratic administration of knowledge and technologically enabled openness. It will be no surprise that while I am not known as a techno-Utopian I don’t quite share Lyotards scepticism towards the idea of openness, since I regard it as an opportunity to preserve and enhance the openness of open societies (an d aspirant open societies) rather than simply a function of late capitalism.

Despite, or because of, my disagreement on this and several other issues I found that the book raises important questions central to how we understand the changing world.