I’m burying the lead here, folks, so bear with me.

Postmodernism offers many problems for authority and the status quo, which is the biggest reason those in power choose to vilify everything about it. Even that allegedly open-minded bastion of freedom called academia plays a role in this, because the institution of education (like all others) is also based on hierarchy and authority. I don’t think postmodernism is a choice; it’s simply a turning of the historical page. As such, those who steadfastly refuse its fruit are begging for irrelevancy.

One of the central thoughts of postmodernism is deconstruction, the taking apart of any belief (or whatever) and examining its roots. I think deconstruction is a good thing, and I routinely follow the practice in examining modernist cultural (and especially business) norms. It’s amazing what you can find by a little trip through history. The whole professional versus amateur journalism argument, for example, becomes a little more easy to understand if Walter Lippmann and his beliefs form the/a foundation for contemporary journalism instead of the illusionary heroics of Woodward and Bernstein.

As I’ve written in the past, the structure of the Internet forces users into the practice of deconstruction, whether they know it or not, by undermining the authority of text. This is the great cultural threat to the status quo. Through links and references — and especially those provided by bloggers — people are now thrust into a deconstructionist reality, where absolutes have difficulty flourishing. You can decide for yourself it that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but you cannot deny that it is occurring.

A couple of years ago, Chicago attorney and philosopher Peter Lurie published what I think is a seminal essay in understanding the cultural influence of the Internet.

The content available online is much less important than the manner in which it is delivered; indeed, the way the Web is structured. Its influence is structural rather than informational, and its structure is agnostic. For that reason, parental controls of the sort that AOL can offer give no comfort to conservatives. It’s not that Johnny will Google “hardcore” or “T&A” rather than “family values;” rather, it’s that Johnny will come to think, consciously or not, of everything he reads as linked, associative and contingent. He will be disinclined to accept the authority of any text, whether religious, political or artistic, since he has learned that there is no such thing as the last word, or indeed even a series of words that do not link, in some way, to some other text or game. For those who grow up reading online, reading will come to seem a game, one that endlessly plays out in unlimited directions. The web, in providing link after associative link, commentary upon every picture and paragraph, allows, indeed requires, users to engage in a postmodernist inquiry.