The Creative Society

This is something that is haunting me from a while: Is the so-called First World entering in a new social-economic phase or a new mode of production? The symptoms are there: pleasure work (Facebok, Youtube, Blogger, etc), free information, art sales boom; but they are scattered and don't seem to be enough to announce the birth of a new paradigm.

I don't like to read on my interface for hours at a time. It doesn't make any sense to write a standard 25 pages paper with a bibliography of 20 authors minimum to build an argument that nobody has the time to read. It is not worth it, so here is what I propose: rather that making a sweeping argument about a new discovery, I'd rather put a bunch of factors and symptoms and try to order them as a list of related elements that would shed light as a whole about a new social-economic condition (Ufff, that sounds pretty pretentious anyway.)

To do research to support my point would take moons and months. I will present the examples one at a time and when I think I have enough of them I will write the conclusions (which is where my paper starts.)

The conclusion is: We are at the begginning of a new mode of production, a new social-economic stage, a new cultural paradigm that I will call the Creative Society (CSo).

Some of the symptoms of this new CSo are:

• Information is free
• End of manufacturing assembly lines as a production paradigm (Taylorism and Fordism). Substituted by individualized merchandising such as Nike and Burberry self-design. Googleism or the  creative idea first.
• Social media, networking and sharing allowing individual self-reliance and economic independence
• Blogging 
• Self-publishing, 
• Planning, branding, designing, and all the tools of marketing at one's reach. 
• Network economics.
• 3d printing
• Art sales boom
• Necessity of innovation, creativity (what I call the artistic mindset) in order to be able to survive in the harsh economic competition and relentless increase in the cost of living.

It would be useful to review the last attempts to theorize a new paradigm. It was a sad one and it happened about 30 years ago. Does anyone remember that discredited intellectual trend called "post-modernism?" I don't know who still believes in post-modern theory but the ones who still do, well sorry for you guys. I never truly understood what the point was. A building with a bunch of architectural styles one on top of the other? Las Vegas decorative shelter architecture v.s. modern and programmatic ducks? A aesthetic category? I'd like to think that buildings, books and artistic products are good examples and arguments, but do they are enough to claim the birth of a new social-economic paradigm? What about the failure of meta-narratives? The Cold War is long gone, but is it? I mean, there is still North Korea (there will be North Korea forever, trust me), China and Cuba; add to them Venezuela and Iran.  I see several Cold and Hot Wars around. When was the last time history ended as Francis Fukuyama would have us desire?

Nevertheless, although post-modern theory is despised in inner academic circles. I will start by reviewing its main conceptual points and saving what is to be saved, if any. That will provide me with a reference, a view of the last attempt a paradigm was tried to be constructed with the aid of a conceptual apparatus only.

I'm of the opinion that, if there is a new paradigm taking place out there, it is not one being built from the outside by a group of intellectuals. It is happening right in front of our eyes. It started with massification of the internet, cheap communications, trade and globalization. In tandem with the decentering, split personality, self-reliant "you are on your own" individual.

I will try to stay away from sweeping statements such as: "A new paradigm has been born" or "We are entering a new phase of capitalism, the Creative Condition." If I can provide enough examples and arguments to get you in a position to be able to judge by yourself if we have indeed entered the last phase of capitalism, the Creative Society, then I would have succeed it. I will mark off the examples listed to this cause with the  CSo sig. And if I find enough of them to prove that we are indeed entering into a new mode of production, a new social-economic stage or a new cultural paradigm, then I will state the conclusion. Otherwise I will be happy if somebody pick up into my line of thought and finish it. Or if time proves me right.