A Model for a Collective Aesthetic Consciousness

During the 20th century, the modern media was born and viewed as an industrial factory-model machine. These powerful media such as film, radio, and television transmitted culture to the passive masses (Enzensberger, 1974). These art forms were divorced of ritual and authenticity and were reproduced to reinforce their prowess (Benjamin, 1936). In the 21st-century post-media condition, a process of convergence and evolution toward a social consciousness, facilitated by a many-to-many social network strategy, is underway. Web 2.0 technologies are a catalyst toward an emergence of a collectivist aesthetic consciousness. As the prophecy of a post-industrial society (Bell, 1973) becomes fulfilled, a post-media society emerges whose quest is for knowledge dependent upon an economy that barters information. This paper identifies a conceptual model of this recent paradigm shift and to identify some of the possibilities that are emerging.