In order to understand metamodernism, it's essential to understand its history.

After the industrial revolution, the popular episteme was “modernism”, or a cultural philosophy that was heavily optimistic for the future. Tradition was dead. Innovation and breaking the status quo was the new driving force. There was an attitude that humans could become the masters of their own destiny.

But after WWII, the world became more cynical. The great modernist experiment was reversed–suddenly, people became more critical of technology and culture, denouncing optimistic ideas and beliefs. This general shift is called postmodernism. In our recent postmodernist culture, criticism, irony, and individualism has become more popular, with the structures that make up society becoming heavily scrutinized.

With the advent of the internet, however, a new philosophy has been emerging. The question becomes: What comes after postmodernism? What beliefs will shape our new generations? To some people, the answer to this is metamodernism .

In 2010, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker released an academic article called Notes on Metamodernism, and uploaded a site of the same name that explored this idea in depth. The main definition of this new term was an “oscillation between the ironic and sincere”: a swinging pendulum between the criticality of postmodernism and optimism of modernism.

Metamodernism has evolved since its initial conception, growing to encompass a greater framework for how we can understand our hyper-connected digital world. As technology accelerates and reorients the way we perceive reality, new modes of thinking can help us grapple with making sense of it all.

We are flooded with information. We understand more about humanity than we ever have. Binary thinking of good and bad, we versus them, old and new, no longer apply to the infinite expanse of possibility and knowledge that we're becoming enmeshed with. So it's important to oscillate, to understand that contradictory ideas can both be true. Most of all, it's important to transcend old ways of thinking in order to make something new.

So what does this all mean for us today?

Metamodernist ideas can be seen in how we navigate our daily lives; we live in both the digital and physical worlds, going in between them seamlessly to yield creation and understanding beyond what could be achieved alone.

For younger generations, screens full of media and information will be something they've known since birth. It's more important than ever to create guidelines for perceiving reality. It's more important than ever to discern nuance and critical thinking, especially as rapidly growing technology distorts the way we see truth, privacy, narratives, sensory experiences, and each other. Adapting metamodern ideas can help us navigate our future.