Defining the ’00s, revisited

Something that spools from these is that we don’t really have style subcultures anymore. Instead we have a playlist culture, where you’re allowed to mash up everything around you in a sort of pick’n’mix.

Ekow Eshun, Artistic director, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. From The i-Decade, on the More Intelligent Life blog.

I think Eshun nails it. I’ll take it one step further: I think the ’00s is the era of the individual supplanting the institution. Blogging is beginning to replace massive news organizations. We listen to radio less, instead listening to our iPod playlists. We broadcast who we are and what we’re into on Twitter. We can be our own banker of sorts through companies like Kiva and Prosper. We get internet famous by posting a YouTube video. We read the news we want by subscribing to RSS feeds. Content creation and consumption is driven more by what the individual wants and less by what companies try to tell us we want.

This doesn’t mean that institutions are no longer important. We still need some form of governance to settle disputes and ensure fairness and justice. We still need some way of exchanging goods and services. We still need paved roads and street lights and garbage pickup. Someone still has to create and bring to market those products we consume.

But I do think that the relationship between the individual and the institution has shifted in the last decade. We’re less mass and more micro. And institutions are struggling to adapt.

What sayeth you? How do you define the Noughties?

Related: On Style In The ’00s: “Defining The Noughties”

UPDATE: Also related: A Web of Lone Wolves from Foreign Policy magazine. The piece touches on the power of the individual in its look at Internet jihadism and how people are connecting online to wreak havoc ofline.