SOURCE: “A Reflection on Post-Modernism,” in Artforum, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, September, 1985, pp. 104-05.

In the following excerpt, Linker reflects upon the significance of Lyotard's postmodern exhibition Les immateriaux.

In 1968, London's Institute of Contemporary Art organized “Cybernetic Serendipity,” an exhibition intended to indicate the effects of technology on modern life. As its title suggests, this dizzying display of technology presented a paradisiacal vision of the capacity of the machine, and to this day it remains one of the central projections of a technological utopia based on the notion of modernization. Underlying it was the premise of “technoscience” as a prosthetic, or aid, to universal mastery; the cybernetic revolution appeared to accomplish man's aim of material transformation, of shaping the world in the image of himself. “Cybernetic Serendipity” was launched in the name of Modernity, an ideal that, since the time of Descartes, has focused on the will and creative...