Hypermodernism is a contemporary philosophy to understand culture, life, and reality. It is widely considered a successor to modernism and postmodernism. Modernism was characterized by a stable idea of truth and grand narratives that could explain the world. Rebelling against this absolute idea of truth, postmodernism (popular in the late twentieth century) worked to deconstruct any notion of absolute truth. Both modernity and postmodernity relied upon form to some extent: the former to argue for bounds and the latter to destroy these bounds and prove them inaccurate or even unethical. Hypermodernity, on the other hand, does not even construct an idea of form or bounds as necessary to its philosophy. Hypermodernism is mostly related to contemporary technologies. Scholar Alan N. Shapiro writes,
I associate hyper-modernism with new media and new technologies, and with those conditions of virtual and online life which have disrupted classical, modernist and even post-modernist assumptions about...
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and experiences of space and time.
Hypermodernism exists in an extended present. Within this present moment, history as a chronological continuum does not exist, and neither does the future, as in the sense of science fiction or imagined futures. We are considered to be living within this new space and time already; it is a reality that we already understand is integrated with technology. Some examples of this include online avatars, virtual reality, or technology interfering with politics. There are not yet accurate ways to think of this reality, nor the right models of time and space, nor (generally) poetics or art of hypermodernity, as the coders of computers are primarily focused on function and not art. These are the general concepts and basis of the philosophy of hypermodernism.
In terms of literature, authors such as Don Delillo or Donna Haraway are considered hypermodern. Hypermodern literature is literature or text that performs its message because it is not reliant upon a history of future self, but rather is existence in the moment. Social media and new media forms that are textual, therefore, also are considered hypermodern.
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As modernism sought to explore the limitations of the human condition, and as postmodernism balked those limitations, hypermodernism suggests there are no fixed limitations on the human condition, thanks primarily to technology.
One of the better examples of hypermodernism is an avatar in a simulation game. A modernist would explain an avatar of himself as symbolic; the actions of an avatar in the context of the game may superficially represent him, but it is not otherwise related to him in a physical or emotional way. A postmodernist would explain an avatar of herself as an extension of herself; she can design an avatar's appearance to literally resemble her or to resemble how she sees herself; she can design an experience for her avatar that is physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually similar to her actual life or that has qualities of her internal life.
A hypermodernist sees the avatar as a literal extension of their physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual being. An avatar may or may not literally resemble any of these aspects of the player in the physical realm, but that does not mean their experiences are not fully integrated. This results in an augmented reality, or a so-called virtual reality, where the life within the game (or any virtual space) is simply part of life in total.
Let's say each of these examples plays a game in which they slay a dragon.
A modernist might say, "A character that looks like me slayed a dragon."
A postmodernist might say, "A character that represents me slayed a dragon."
A hypermodernist might say, "I slayed a dragon."