Complexity, criticality and meta-modernity

-What brings novelty and persistence together in the same condition? Modernity is characterized by the new, and postmodernity by recyclage of the old. Meta-modernity will have to synthesize both. One of the conceptual themes we've been studying all along achieves such a synthesis: complexity. Complex systems are on the edge of chaos. Their intricate internal structure allows them to maintain their organization in the face of changing conditions, while also allowing them to adapt and change. The complex brings together novelty and persistence because it is that state which allows enough chaos for change and enough order for recurrence at the same time.

-Push order to its limit and it becomes chaotic. Push chaos to its limit and order emerges. In between order and chaos is a critical region of complexity. Criticality, too, will be a central motif of meta-modernity. What is criticality like? Critical states are scale-invariant: they possess structures of all sizes on all scales. In the critical phase-transition of a magnet, there are clusters of north-pointing atoms and clusters of south-pointing atoms of all sizes, from one atom to system-spanning percolating clusters. The geometry of these mixed clusters is fractal. Critical states are also coherent: what happens in one part of the system quickly affects the rest of the system. And critical states are optimally free. A critical system has all its possible states equally present; it can transform into any of its states in a minimum number of steps.

-At this critical moment in history, the synthesis of modern and postmodern can be seen as between them rather than as beyond them. Meta-modernity is a critical phase transition in culture, a fractal boundary between different cultural states. Categorical distinctions are neither erased nor ossified in this critical state. Instead, every entity can become anything at any time, in one step. Entities turn into information-bearing monads that can flip states spontaneously. A monad can choose to be living or non-living, art or non-art, conscious or unconscious, human or inhuman.