Renais­sance VC Fred Wilson thinks we’re liv­ing in a pseudo-modern — although he prefers the term ‘par­ti­cip­at­iv­ist’ — era. Even the news can’t escape!

Pseudo-modernism also encom­passes con­tem­por­ary news pro­grammes, whose con­tent increas­ingly con­sists of emails or text mes­sages sent in com­ment­ing on the news items. The ter­min­o­logy of ‘inter­activ­ity’ is equally inap­pro­pri­ate here, since there is no exchange: instead, the viewer or listener enters – writes a seg­ment of the pro­gramme – then departs, return­ing to a pass­ive role.