Culture today (work in progress)

I grew up during postmodernism, the time after modernism when culture questioned modernism's search for truth and meaning, instead embracing multiple meanings and perspectives. 

But I've been trying to figure out where we are now. While architecture has moved onto parametricism, society is for sure in the digital age, but the digital age doesn't really describe the culture as much as material situation.

I'm beginning to see how society has been effected by the digital age (or how it has changed in general), and it seems to be some kind of almost fractured pre-modernism. With information being so easily and widely spread by anyone, so many ideas and worldviews that would have been remained fringe in the past have been able to gain major traction.

The ideas of postmodernism seem to have been a highpoint in intellectual thought, and that traditional is carried forth by fewer and fewer, but it seems cultural and intellectual progress has receded in favor of technological progress and getting followers and likes.

So, we have largely political movements that try to take on some legitimacy by sounding logical, but really fall apart on closer examination. In the past, these ideas would've faded early because of the barriers to reproduction of ideas. Whereas today, these ideas are spread by anyone and easily reaching anyone, the more politically motivated and outlandish the better.

Consider how media has changed. Before, to spread your ideas to a wide group of people you had to get published or get on the radio or television. Today, though you can just use your phone and upload a video with the potential to reach the world.

The gatekeepers of the past, editors and publishers, have been replaced by algorithms. And algorithms do not select on intellectual merit (though, it could be argued neither do some editors). 

In the past, people who said dumb, unscientific, extremist, outrageous things were less likely to get published and disseminated, whereas today they are more likely to. Furthermore, algos can hide behind the veneer of technological objectivity (which is obviously questionable, because people are involved in implementing algos), whereas editors might be held accountable for their choices.