Hypermodernity is a design-oriented heuristic that assumes that the part, when deconstructed to an attribute, can become GREATER than the whole. This is in contrast to
postmodernism which posits that the WHOLE is greater than the sum of its parts.
A great way to counterpose postmodernism and hypermodernity is to say that while postmodern has an (
anti-) object-orientation hypermodernity has an ATTRIBUTE-orientation
Hypermodernity exists in an increasingly fault-tolerant user experience in which objects are being deconstructed to their skeuomorphs (mimetic attributes). A tangible example of this is the touch-screen keypad replacing the flip phone keypad.
This has measurable impact on cultural consumers; who now
define a product as an intersection between form and function (analogous to whole and sum-of-parts unity in modernism). Form-function unity induces a parallel
revolution in material design and composition. (
Even the term “material design” is an oxymoron in postmodernism.)
The increasing prevalence of skeuomorphs in disparate technological contexts and mediums means that culturally, the fake converges with the real in a hyperreality or augmented-
reality-as-an-interface existence. This is evidenced by the rise of virtual
reality, Google
glass, Pokemon Go, virtual geo-cache incentivization, and most significantly, false social nodes (filter bubbles) created by online social networks that have an off-world impact.
In postmodernity, we watched drama on
television and interpreted
reality as drama; in hypermodernity, we watch
reality on television and live in a Trumpian drama.
