Cultural Collisions and Collusions in the Electronic Global Village: From McWorld and Jihad to Intercultural Cosmopolitanism

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Cultural Collisions and Collusions in the Electronic Global Village: From

McWorld and Jihad to Intercultural Cosmopolitanism

Dr. Charles EssDrury UniversityIntroduction

In the Western context, Marshall McLuhan's notion of an "electronic global village" is a centralicon. This hopeful vision of a global community, interconnected through the technological webof computer-mediated communication (CMC), will ostensibly lead to one happy global family -a family enjoying transparent communication, economic prosperity, and radical new individualand political freedoms. Partly on the strength of this optimistic icon, the technologies andservices of CMC are produced and consumed at an exponentially accelerating rate.

The global race to implement McLuhan's vision, however, should raise for us a set of central questions, if we consider that much of CMC technology is designed in theindustrialized world (first of all, of course, the United States) - and that the vast majorityof Internet users (at the time of this writing, ca. 75%) are citizens of the United States.In light of these cultural origins and patterns of consumption, can we simply assume that

CMC technologies - of largely North American origin and use - will mesh seamlesslywith the communicative preferences and cultural values of all peoples, and thus enable aflawless and transparent global communication? Or might we rightly wonder whether culture - including not only distinctive cultural values but also specific communicationstyles - plays a role in the design, implementation, and use of CMC technologies?Especially given the ostensibly global intention of McLuhan's vision, it is somewhatsurprising to observe that Western public discourse and even the scholarly literatures of the 1990's pertinent to these issues (philosophy of technology, communication theory,cultural studies, etc.) are largely silent on these central cultural questions. In response tothis deficit, since 1997 Fay Sudweeks (Senior Lecturer in Information Technology,Murdoch University, Western Australia) and I have collaborated on a project called"Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication" (CATaC). With fundingfrom the Swiss Technology Assessment Program and support from numerous scholarlyorganizations, we held our first conference in July-August, 1998, at the ScienceMuseum (London). To our knowledge, the conference was the first of its kind – aninternational gathering of some 60 scholars and researchers from 18 countries,representing both a wide range of cultures (North/South, East/West,developed/developing) and disciplines (philosophy, culture studies, social studies,communication studies, and Information Technology) – devoted to discussion of boththeoretical approaches to and insights from praxis regarding the complex interactions between culture, communication, and technology (Ess, 1998:

<http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac98/01_ess.html>). CATaC '98 issuedin a series of publications as well as a second conference in July, 2000 at MurdochUniversity, Western Australia (see <www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac00/>).In the following, I draw on CATaC papers and related scholarship in philosophy of technology, communication theory, and intercultural studies, as these illuminate theculturally-related questions surrounding the "electronic global village" as an icon of Western discourse. This research helps uncover and shed critical light on two of thecentral philosophical underpinnings of McLuhan's notion and its postmodern relatives.



The first of these, technological instrumentalism, assumes that technology is value-free and thereby culturally neutral – "merely a tool." By contrast, technological determinism claims that technology constitutes an unstoppable force, one that will"steamroll" over given cultural values (Jones, 1998). Technological determinism, that is,underlies the utopian vision of the electronic global village, insofar as enthusiasts often

presume that the introduction of CMC technologies in the form of the Internet and theWorld Wide Web will inevitably issue in such Western values as preferences for individualism, equality, freedom of expression, and democratic polity. At the same time,however, technological determinism underlies dystopian visions of our technologically-mediated future, as in the Star Trek character of the Borg. Indeed, technologicaldeterminism raises a very real-world specter - the apparent dilemma between theculturally homogenous "McWorld" (resulting from the global spread of CMCtechnologies as these impose a specific set of cultural values and communicative preferences) vs. "Jihad" (the fragmenting, sometimes violent efforts to preserve culturalidentity [Barber, 1993]).I propose to test these philosophical positions - and thus their political consequences -

in light of the praxis of CMC, i.e., in terms of the cultural impacts of these technologiesas they are implemented - and sometimes reshaped - in diverse cultural settings. In particular, I examine whether or not these technologies indeed inevitably democratize.First of all, this research uncovers a range of cultural values that are indeed embedded incontemporary CMC technologies, and thus that conflict, sometimes radically, with the prevailing cultural values and communicative preferences of diverse cultures - especiallythe cultures of Asia. In the face of these conflicts, however, various cultures havedeveloped a number of strategies for resisting and reshaping the values favored byCMC technologies, in order to sustain and even enhance their distinctive values and preferences. To paraphrase Star Trek: resistance is not futile! These results from praxis thus undermine both technological instrumentalism and technologicaldeterminism, pointing towards a philosophical middle ground that we can call,following Don Ihde (1973), soft determinism. This philosophical middle ground,moreover, points to a way out of the political dilemma issuing from technologicaldeterminism - the apparently intractable choice between McWorld vs. Jihad. Rather, amiddle ground - originally described by Thai philosopher Soraj Hongladarom in termsof a global but "thin" Internet culture conjoined with a "thick" local culture - may allowus to use CMC technologies for both global communications and the preservation andenhancement of distinctive cultural values.Soft determinism and the possibility of avoiding McWorld vs. Jihad means, however,that much depends on the values and choices of the users. In other words, these

results thus turn our focus from the technologies to their social context of use - i.e., theindividual users and their ethical/ social/ political/ cultural orientation. I argue by way of conclusion that if a global village is to emerge that not only overcomes its self-contradictory philosophical underpinnings, but also thereby achieves a middle groundthat avoids McWorld and Jihad – the citizens of such a village will need to becomemore than simply cultural tourists whose Net-mediated interactions with "other" culturesremain superficial and consumer-oriented. Precisely to avoid the dangers of ethnocentrism in cyberspace ("cybercentrism") and its affiliated cultural imperialism will



require cosmopolitans, "citizens of the world," who recognize and learn to move amonga wide range of the diverse cultures and communicative systems that will make up agenuinely pluralistic global village. In addition, these cosmopolitans will have a clear understanding of the especially philosophical elements of diverse cultural worldview(including diverse cultural preferences regarding the individual vis-ˆ-vis the collective,

diverse notions of human identity as bound up with cultural beliefs regarding gender andthe nature of embodiment ) as well as culturally diverse communicative preferences.Such understanding will make possible the multiple interactions in praxis among a widediversity of cultures and peoples that constitute communication in a genuinely pluralisticelectronic global village.

1. Philosophical foundations of "the electronic global village" and the democratization

claim.

A central justification for CMC technologies is the claim that these technologies facilitate ademocratizing form of communication – i.e., communication that flattens traditional hierarchies,expands freedom of individual expression, and gives everyone a voice in a global society. Suchclaims obviously appeal to core values of North American culture. More broadly, the

conception of an electronic global village appears to rest on two contradictory assumptions. Onthe one hand, McLuhan (1965) presumed that the technologies that would facilitate theemergence of the electronic global village were themselves morally neutral or value-free. Thatis, such technologies are presumed neither to embed nor foster any given set of ethical or cultural values: as morally neutral, the only question that can then be put regarding technologiesare the ends or goals to which they serve as means. This view of technology is discussed by philosophers of technology as technological instrumentalism. On the other hand, especially popular views of CMC technologies seem to presuppose a technological determinism. Such aview sees technology and whatever effects follow in its wake as possessing their ownautonomous power, one that cannot be resisted or turned by individual or collective decisions.Proponents presume that the introduction of CMC technologies will inevitably convey andreinforce cultural values - specific preferences, say, for free speech and individualism, particularly in the case of the Internet and the Web, as centralized control of informationconveyed through these technologies is very difficult. Interestingly, this same philosophical presumption underlies an apparently opposite vision: in the inverse dystopian image, captured powerfully in the images of the Borg in Star Trekª , technology is likewise an unstoppable force.Once infected by the Borg implants, all humanity (specifically such qualities as individuality andcompassion) is lost as one becomes seamlessly integrated into the single-minded machinery of the Collective. Such science-fiction portrayals unfortunately capture, moreover, the real-worldfears of those who see CMC technologies as central engines in a global but homogenousMcWorld that will override and eliminate local choice and distinctive cultural values (Barber,

1993, 1995).The popular image of an electronic global village, as implicating both technologicalinstrumentalism and technological determinism, thus rests on two fundamental butcontradictory claims regarding technology. Beyond this underlying contradiction, bothclaims are themselves open to doubt - especially in light of what happens in praxis asCMC technologies are diffused in diverse cultural settings. We will see how this is so, beginning with a focus on the claim of technological instrumentalism.

2. Are CMC technologies value-neutral? Contra technological instrumentalism



2a. The role of culture in technology diffusion: the North American and European

contexts

Two case studies make clear that CMC technologies are neither value neutral nor unstoppableforces, but rather, as embedding values affiliated with specific cultures, the diffusion of thesetechnologies in diverse cultures is fundamentally dependent on specific cultural values, including

values and communication preferences defined by gender. To begin with, Stewart, Shields andSen (1998) observe that women and minorities have historically enjoyed less access to CMCtechnologies. They uncover two sorts of differences in communication style appearing in listservsthat help explain such disparity of access: cultural differences (first articulated by Hall betweenhigh- and low-context cultures, and supplemented here by Ting-Toomey's Face-NegotiationTheory), and gender -related differences (documented by Tannen and Herring). Their study of an in-class listserv, designed to further free and open communication among a considerablediversity of students, strikingly confirms that gender and culture nonetheless profoundly limit howfar listservs may be said to be open and democratic.

Secondly, Lucienne Rey (1998) studied the political differences between the four major linguistic groups of Switzerland - German, French, Italian, and Romansch - and then

investigated whether these ethnic/linguistic differences also correlate with differentattitudes towards technology. In fact, she found that the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the most politically and economically dominant component of the country,is at the same time the most culturally conservative - in the sense that German-speakingSwiss show less openness to and interest in the new communications technologies thantheir Latin compatriots.These and other examples make clear that CMC technologies are neither value-neutralnor inevitably imperialistic – capable of simply steamrolling (Jones, 1998) over thevalues and communicative preferences characteristic of a specific culture and replacingthese with the values and preferences these technologies foster. Rather, the diffusion of such technologies involves complex interactions between these two value systems.One of the first systematic studies of the interaction between culture and computingtechnologies was undertaken by Hofstede (1980), who developed a schema thateventually included five dimensions of national culture that appear to shape basicapproaches to computing technologies. Maitland and Bauer (in press) build onHofstede's research to empirically determine the relatively importance of culturalvariables in predicting the rate of technology diffusion. Their extensive statistical studydraws on a considerable range of data sources, as available for 185 countries during thetime period between 1991 and 1997. They include three cultural factors in their study:uncertainty avoidance (where weak uncertainty avoidance means "What is different isseen as curious, as opposed to dangerous"), gender equality, and English language

ability.In examining Internet growth between countries, they find that cultural variables are lesssignificant in explaining adoption than economic or infrastructure variables: of these,teledensity, International Call Cost, and School Enrollment emerge as the strongest predictors - the last finding supporting the importance of education in development. For that, the cultural factor of English language ability also plays a significant role. Inanalyzing growth within countries, their data likewise uncovers a comparatively stronger role for economic factors - in this case, the number of PC's per capita. But cultural



factors - namely, uncertainty avoidance and gender empowerment - also play asignificant role.Given that even within the Western sphere, cultural conflicts with the values embeddedand fostered by CMC technologies arise (see as well Pargmann 1999; Grotenhuis2000) – we might expect that even more dramatic conflicts between the values

embedded in CMC technologies and culture as Western CMC technologies areintroduced in non-Western contexts. In fact, scattered reports in the literatures of communication theory described such conflicts relatively early. More recently, Sofield(2000) highlights the clear opposition between Western cultural values at work inCMC technologies and the values defining the Kiribati of Oceania: a preference for paternal rather than democratic forms of government; secrecy and central control over media vs. the openness of CMC systems; and an emphasis on community rather thanthe individual - an emphasis that sternly frowns on "shining," i.e., a single individualstanding out, as s/he might do if s/he acquired new technology and informationresources. While the Kiribati may seem to serve as a marginal example - their exampleis marginal in a crucial philosophical sense: by delimiting the boundaries of Western

cultural values, the Kiribati puncture the otherwise easy ethnocentrism that presumesthat all the world will indeed embrace - whether freely or by force - Western CMCtechnologies.Such cultural differences in fundamental values – and the challenges they pose to theclaims of technological instrumentalism (as well as to technological determinism, andattendant hopes for an electronic global village) – can be seen further in praxis inseveral recent case studies in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo, andThailand.

2b. Conflicts in praxis between East and West

Japan. Contrary to the view that technologies are value and culturally neutral, Lorna Heaton(1998) shows how cultural values and communication styles specific to Japan are incorporatedin the design of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems. Heaton highlights theimportance of non-verbal cues and the direction of gaze in Japanese culture as an example of Hall's 'high context/low content' category of cultural communication style, in contrast withWestern preferences for direct eye contact and 'low context/high content' forms of communication. She also notes the Japanese interest in pen-based computing, speech synthesis,virtual reality interfaces, etc., as resulting not only from the physical difficulties of using a Romankeyboard to input Japanese, but also the larger cultural preference for high context incommunication. (These results are further consistent with the findings of Gill, 1998.)Korea. Sunny Yoon (in press) counters the familiar portrayal of the Internet as a medium thatwill engender greater democracy, especially in the form of an electronic "public sphere" –

required for democracy, according to Habermas. In this way, her research on Korean praxisdirectly contradicts the theoretical hope, expressed by Becker and Wehner (1998), that CMCtechnologies might realize at least elements of Habermas' conception of democracy. She notesthe ways in which the Net, especially as it becomes ever more commercialized, may work rather as a controlling mechanism for capital and power. Here, she takes up Foucault onceagain (see Yoon, 1996), along with Bordieu's notion of Habitus, as frameworks for analyzing power as manifested in the workings and impacts of the Net.

In her quantitative study of Korean newspaper reports on the Internet and Internet-



based activities, Yoon shows that Korean journalism fails to encourage the use of the Net as a medium of participatory communication. Rather, Korean reporting contributesto the commercialization of the Net and thereby, some argue, unequal access to anddistribution of information resources. Yoon then turns to a series of ethnographicinterviews with young Koreans ("Gen-Xers"). These interviews demonstrate that the

Internet exercises symbolic or positive power - including symbolic violence in Bordieu'ssense - as it shapes educational rules and linguistic habits. In particular, Korean studentsaccept the dominance and importance of English on the Net without question. Languagethereby becomes a cultural capital that exercises "Ésymbolic power over the culturalhave-nots in the virtual world system," a cultural capital that induces a "voluntarysubjugation." Moreover, Yoon documents how individuals take up the Internet, not because of its promise of greater equality and democracy, or even utility, but because itincreases their status, and thereby their distance from and power over others. As well,the comparative expertise of young people gives them considerable power over their elders because teachers, principals, and parents rely more and more on the younger generation to help them learn how to use computers, design institutional documents and

Web pages, etc. Contrary to the presumption that the Internet only democratizes, Yoondemonstrates that the Internet, by shaping Habitus in these ways, can lead either toresistance or subjugation, to democratic communication, or (cultural) capitalistdominance. Consequently, she argues, we must better understand the concrete processes of how the Internet functions as the Habitus of people in their everyday lives before attempting to decide which of these two directions the Internet might take us.

Indonesia. Abdat and Pervan (2000) address research on Group Support Systems (GSS) toshow the contrast between Western cultural values and those characteristic of Indonesia -namely, relatively high power distance, low individualism, and weak uncertainty avoidance.Under these circumstances, the practice of using GSS technologies to reduce power distanceeffects - e.g., through anonymous comments - can backfire. Especially given the importance of saving face (a Confucian value) and high collectivism, people prefer to arrive at significantmeetings with all the details already arranged. Negotiations, including criticisms, are better undertaken in pre-meetings. But here, anonymity, while reducing power distance, can alsothereby disrupt the important cultural value of low individualism: individuals often want to havetheir ideas and suggestions reviewed and approved by a superior before "broadcasting" them tothe larger group. This suggests that anonymity should be a "switchable" feature of GSS systems- i.e., one that can be turned on or off, depending on specific cultural preferences and needs.(Similar comments regarding Thai culture, also marked by high power distance and weak uncertainty avoidance, are made by Thanasankit and Corbitt, 2000.)Malyasia. Nasrin Rahmati's study of two decision-making groups utilizing a Group Support

Systems (GSS) environments (2000). GSS involves both social and technical ways of facilitatinggroup interaction and improving group performance. But among previous studies on GSS, onlythree include culture as a variable. Rahmati argues, however, that 'culture' is the primary sourceof the cognitive base - a base that includes individuals' values, beliefs, and standards - throughwhich individuals interpret and experience the world, as well as make value judgments anddecisions regarding competing alternatives. As such, 'culture' is hence a central variable indetermining how well GSS systems can "work" (i.e., achieve their goals of facilitating groupinteraction and decision-making) - and it thus becomes critical to understand the role of culture



if GSS systems are to be designed effectively.Rahmati builds on earlier literature (Hofstede, Schwartz and Bilsky) to develop her ownmodel of cultural analysis as then applied to Malaysia and Australia. Rahmati's ninecultural factors include the "religious commitment factor," defined asthe relation of an individual to any ideological system, in this case a religious system, and

it admits of different dimensions or types of variation; the individual's acceptance or rejection of the beliefs of the system (Orthodoxy), his or her orientation toward other persons with respect to his or her beliefs ( Fanaticism), and the significance of their beliefs to their self-conception ( Importance) É.(262f.)The importance of the religious factor becomes evident in Rahmati's initial analysis of Australian and Malaysian cultures: while there are relatively small (if any) differences between the two in terms of, say, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, etc. - the twocultures are clearly different in terms of religious commitment as religious commitmentfigures more significantly in Malaysia than Australia. Indeed, Rahmati found that strikingcontrasts emerged between Malaysian and Australian students who approached thesame decision-making problem in a similar GSS environment with regard to religious

commitment (more than twice as significant for Malaysians than for Australians) andlocus of control (defined as "the tendency of the individual to be in control of his or her own life" - a factor that was nearly twice as important for Australians than for Malaysians). As well, the high fatalism factor (the belief that events, including theconsequences of one's own actions, are largely beyond one's control and in the hands olarger, external forces) for Malaysian students seems correlated with a greater willingness to take risks (because the consequences are the responsibility of externalforces). By contrast, the Australians, who scored higher with regard to the locus of control factor, and thus felt more responsible for the consequences of their decisions,required more "air time" to discuss their points of view and the details of eachalternative, in order to reduce the risk of bad decisions.Finally, Rahmati describes Malaysia as a tight society - i.e., one marked by "Éhigher uncertainty avoidance, religious commitment, and collectivismÉ, as well as hightraditionalism and external locus of control (Fatalism)." (269f.) Australia, by contrast, isa loose society, one marked by high individualism, low traditionalism, and high internallocus of control. In light of these differences, keeping face - supporting the authorityand status of especially senior members of a group - is culturally much more significantin Malaysia than Australia, and works to encourage public agreement and repression of questions and disagreements with the opinions expressed by seniors. Hence, a GSSsystem for Malaysia (and similarly tight societies) would need to include ways of encouraging lower status group members to express their views without knowingly

calling into question the views of seniors - e.g., through anonymous submission of comments, etc. (As we have seen, however, Abdat argues for a "switchable"anonymity in the Indonesia context.)Finally, Rahmati asserts that her results show that GSS technologies "Écan change the social behavior of groups from different cultures and this change seems to bemore pronounced for a sample from from tight societies than for a sample from loosesocieties." (271, emphasis added, CE) With regard to the larger debate concerningtechnological determinism vs. technological instrumentalism - Rahmati's results argue in





individualism, egalitarianism and other values of a liberal democratic culture (a 'thick' culture inWalzer's terms), and the cosmopolitan culture of the Internet as neutral (a 'thin' culture). TheThai experience suggests that the Internet does not force the importation of Western culturalvalues. Instead, Thai users are free to take up such issues and values if they wish, and they cando so while at the same time preserving their cultural identity.

3. The role of cultural values in IT design and implementation: contra technologicaldeterminism.

3a. Does the Internet Democratize? Theory

It is worth nothing that both philosophers of technology and communication theorists rejecttechnological determinism on a variety of grounds. In particular, the deterministic andmaterialist frameworks underlying technological determinism ignore the ability of individual persons to respond to and mediate larger cultural and technological influences in various ways(cf. Hall, 1992, Lee et al., 1995). But this ability is documented especially in Gudykunst et al(1996), who found that individual communication preferences are not only the behavioral resultof larger cultural preferences (along a spectrum of collectivist societies/low-content messages toindividualist societies/high-content messages), but also correlate with individual self-construals

and preferences. As well, a number of important studies likewise provide examples in praxisthat counter the presumption of technological determinism.

On a theoretical level, one of the strongest contemporary justifications for thedemocratizing effect of CMC technologies is affiliated with Habermas' theory of communicative reason (see Ess, 1996). More recently, Barbara Becker and JosephWehner (1998) take up Nicholas Luhmann's analysis of cyberspace as chaotic in waysfamiliar to readers of postmodernism – e.g., such technologies tend to fragment anddecenter our individual and collective senses of identity, etc. While endorsing Luhmann'sanalysis, Becker and Wehner also find Habermas' conception of Teilšffentlichkeiten("partial publics") as a theoretical counterweight to postmodern decentering – acounterweight crucial for especially any claim that CMC technologies democratize. For Habermas, these partial publics include professional organizations, university clubs,special interest groups, etc., as loci of discourses that contribute to a larger democratic process in modern societies. While recognizing certain problems with how far such partial publics may be instantiated through CMC technologies, Becker and Wehner seethis notion as capturing an important component of how CMC technologies may sustain (within limits) specific interest groups as part of a larger democratic process.

3b. Does the Internet Democratize? Praxis

Two recent case studies of how CMC technologies impact specific national cultures stand asexamples of at least limited instantiation in praxis of the democratizing effect as endorsed

theoretically by Becker and Wehner. Michael Dahan documents how the Internet and the Webhave contributed to a greater openness and support of democratic values in Israel; DeborahWheeler provides considerable evidence for similar impacts, especially with regard to women,in Kuwaiti society.

Dahan (1999) explains in considerable detail the history of Israel's social and culturalvalue system – one that, until recently at least, has (of necessity) preferred the cluster of values associated with national security ("the militaristic values of authoritarian,hierarchical organizations trained in the use of violence") over against democratic civic



values (including equality, freedom of speech and press, and critical debate). In particular, the historical origins of Israel as a "garrison state" have shaped a cultureemphasizing respect for the military, national security, and the importance of censorshipin protecting the state. (These value preferences have been confirmed by polls asrecently as 1993.)

Dahan is clear that many factors – including individualization, economic liberalization, theOslo Accords and the peace process – contribute to a greater openness incontemporary Israeli society, including open civilian critique of the military. And Dahansensibly observes that it is much to early to assess just how far the Internet and the Webhave contributed to a transformation of Israeli culture in the direction of democratic civicvirtues. Nonetheless, Dahan documents several incidents that exemplify how CMCtechnologies have forced open what was previously closed and secret. For Dahan, it isclear that these technologies have indeed played a significant role in Israel'sdevelopment as a democratic society. The proponents' claims regarding CMCtechnologies as democratizing technologies – at least as they are accompanied by other significant social factors – would hence seem confirmed in this case.

Dahan's analysis suggests that enthusiasts' claims that CMC technologies may succeedin spreading Western cultural values of individualism, equality, and democracy – at leastas these technologies work in a country and cultural context (Israel) already deeplyimplicated in Western cultural values. Similar conclusions are drawn by DeborahWheeler (in press). Wheeler tests the familiar promises of CMC technologies - that theywill promote democracy, prosperity, and equality, including gender equality - by way of a careful ethnographic study of Kuwaiti women and their use of the Internet. Her casestudy is valuable first of all as it sheds light on a little researched but critically importantseries of intersections: Islam and sharply defined gender roles vis-ˆ-vis a communicationtechnology hailed by Western feminists for its promise of expanding gender equality. Inaddition, Kuwait is especially instructive insofar as it enjoys one of the highest per capitaincomes in the world. Its government programmatically endorses the acquisition anddistribution of the latest technologies, resulting in the highest density of Internet users per capita of any Islamic society. As well, women in Kuwait enjoy comparatively greater freedoms - including access to education, considerable success in gaining professionalemployment, etc. - than women in many other Muslim countries. In short, if there isresistance to new CMC technologies, such resistance is not obviously the result of infrastructure deficits, an entrenched anti-technology culture, or extreme patriarchalstructures.Wheeler's analysis of how far the Internet and the Web serve the cause of gender equality shows decidedly mixed results. On the one hand, her interviews with younger

women support the notion that these new technologies do have a liberating impact. For example, they allow women to converse "unescorted" with men in chat-rooms, and tomeet and choose mates on their own (rather than agree to the cultural norm of arrangedmarriages). At the same time, however, she finds that the powerful restrictions againstwomen speaking openly in Kuwait are directly mirrored in differences betweenwomen's and men's characteristic use of CMC technologies. As she observes, "Theadvent of new fora for communication do not automatically liberate communicators fromthe cultural vestiges which make every region particular and which hold society



together." And especially in light of other pressing problems - including rising drugabuse, divorce, and a series of social and personal problems resulting from the Iraqioccupation during the Gulf War - it is by no means clear that Western activist agendas should neatly coincide with those of women in Kuwait.These two examples from praxis confirm, to some degree, that CMC technologies can

foster democracy and related values. Contrary to the claims of technological instrumentalism, these studies make clear that CMC technologies in fact embed andfoster specific cultural values (individualism, freedom of expression, etc.). But further contrary to the claims of technological determinism, these examples demonstrate thatCMC technologies alone are not sufficient to change fundamental cultural values: rather,such technologies must be taken up in a social context in which other factors likewiseconspire to support democratization and its core values.More recent work likewise undermines the assumption of technological determinism(e.g., Sofield 2000; Thanasankit 2000; Harris et al 2000; Khoo et al 2000) as theydemonstrate in the context of the East and Oceania that distinctive cultures are notnecessarily overwhelmed by the cultural values and communicative preferences

embedded in Western CMC technologies. Rather: individuals and cultures seemcapable of resisting the imposition of such values and preferences - in part, byreshaping the design and implementation of originally Western technologies. In doingso, they echo and reiterate several contributions to CATaC'98 that demonstrate precisely this point. In particular, they resonate especially well with Hongladarom'smodel of negotiating the local and the global - a model that conjoins a global but "thin"Internet culture with a local "thick" culture whose values and preferences are preservedand perhaps even enhanced through carefully structured use of CMC technologies.

4. Preliminary Conclusions and Future Research Directions

This extensive range of culturally diverse examples makes clear that neither technologicalinstrumentalism nor technological determinism – both underlying if contradictory assumptionsof the iconic electronic global village – are borne out in praxis. In particular, cultural collisions both within the Western sphere and between East and West make clear that CMC technologies – designed and implemented largely within Western cultural frameworks – indeed embed andabet specific cultural values, including (a) communication preferences for high-content/lowcontext (vis-ˆ-vis the preference for high-context/low content characteristic of Arabic and Asiansocieties) and (b) the values clustering about Western conceptions of democracy – specifically,equality and the importance of the individual (vis-ˆ-vis more hierarchical and communitarianvalues characteristic of many Eastern societies). At the same time, multiple examples of diversecultures resisting and reshaping (if not simply marginalizing) CMC technologies demonstrate thatthese technologies are not unstoppable, somehow beyond the possibility of direction and control

by individual and collective choice.In philosophical terms, as these papers undermine both technological determinism andtechnological instrumentalism, they point us in the direction of a middle ground - onedescribed as "soft determinism" by philosopher of technology Don Ihde. This middleground recognizes that, while technologies certainly embed values and bias users inspecific directions, these are not irresistable forces. In the jargon of Star Trek,resistance is not futile.In political terms, these studies make clear that the development and implementation of



CMC technologies do not necessarily condemn us to the apparently intractable dilemmaof "McWorld vs. Jihad." Rather, much along the lines of the Thai model articulated bySoraj Hongladarom, it appears possible for cultures to appropriate and reshapeWestern IT in ways that allow them to remain connected to a global network while preserving and enhancing their own distinctive cultural values and identity.

However helpful this overview may be, it further makes clear that additional work on both the theoretical and empirical levels is needed, beginning with establishing a clear and usable definition of culture. Moreover, postmodern celebration of fragmentationand decentering aside, if the electronic global village is to attain more substance than amarketing icon in consumer society and successfully claim legitimation especially as itinvokes such foundational values as individualism, freedom of expression, anddemocratic polity – this concept needs more theoretical coherency than the currentdiversity of theoretical approaches (so as to include social constructivism and postmodernism as well as their chief critic Habermas, for example) seems capable of providing.In particular, our theories apparently need to take up the central conception of

embodiment . The importance of gender – both vis-ˆ-vis personal identity and one's place in a given cultural system, clearly plays a role in how CMC technologies aredesigned and used. The centrality of gender thereby points to the further importance of culturally diverse notions of embodiment – and thereby, membership (for better and for worse) within a given culture that has shaped one's attitudes regarding body and gender – needs to be a central theme in any definition of culture concerned with the interactions between culture and technology.Indeed, the focus on embodiment and a correlative recognition that (most) human beings cannot jump out of their embodied/gendered cultural identities may work insupport of Hongladarom's model of "thin" but global Internet culture coupled with"thick" local cultures. As we have seen, such a model stands as a middle ground between cultural conservativism and isolationism (Jihad) vs. radical and revolutionarycultural transformation. In doing so, it further points to the central importance of embodiment in our understanding human beings as participants in and shapers of cultural traditions. By contrast, the enthusiasts' emphasis on the radical transformationsto be brought about through the rise of cyberspace often rest on a kind of cyber-gnosticism - a dualistic (indeed, Manichean!) opposition between body (as implicated inthe web of real-life relationships, communities, etc.) and mind (as capable of full self-expression in cyberspace). Such cyber-gnosticism is not only apparent in the (early)cyborg feminism of Donna Haraway, who endorses escape from real-life gender discrimination into the ostensibly gender-blind and gender-equal domain of cyberspace;

it is further at work in the libertarian rejection of real-life political communities, includingtheir limits on free speech, by such spokesmen for the American Internet culture as JohnPerry Barlow, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It may not beaccidental that such Manichean/Gnostic contempt for the body can be found alongsidethe Manichean dualities emphasizing that salvation can only be found by escaping the body in cyberspace. By turning instead to a recognition of the role of embodiment asintertwined with the ways in which culture has us communicate and interact withtechnology, we may develop theoretical understandings of our connection with and



freedom from body and culture more consonant with the middle course of both preserving and moving beyond our local cultures.

5. When cultures collide on the World Wide Web: Whither the electronic global

village?

As anyone knows who has lived in an "other" culture , encountering a culture distinct from one's

own - a culture whose patterns of life, including language, customs, and values may differ radically from those defining the world one has previously inhabited - involves fundamentalcollisions. Collisions occur between the underlying assumptions, including basic ethical and political values and communicative styles that make up the worldview characteristic of eachculture. "Culture shock" is the name we give this experience - a shock involving precisely therealization that what has presumed, perhaps for all of one's life, to be universally human ways of talking, believing, valuing, are instead limited. Other peoples, other cultures, do and believedifferently, and usually seem to thrive in doing so. As the properties of invisible particles may beinferred from the traces and debris of their collisions, so culture shock allows us to uncover theusually fundamental but tacit assumptions of our and other cultures, as it forces us to makeexplicit the manifold presumptions of the colliding worldviews.

Such collisions, in fact, are often the beginning of a journey of discovery and synthesis.When we, as newcomers, seek to become oriented in a new place, we sort throughwhat is radically different and what seems shared ("Everyone cooks with water," theSwiss say). Gradually, we may find that what initially seemed alien is not so strange.Indeed, we often find that some beliefs and habits of other cultures make more "sense"than our own; we may even seek to sustain those ways of being when we return to our own places. In most cases, we do not "go native" - we do not reject all of our original beliefs and values. We become, instead, what is described as multicultural (Adler,1977) "intercultural" (Gudykunst and Kim, 1992), or "Third Culture Persons" (Finn-Jordan, 1998) - that is, multilingual cultural hybrids, able to travel, speak, and live (invarying degrees of facility) in more than one cultural domain.This process of making explicit and sifting through the fundamental elements of diverseworldviews, and constructing new hybrid views and ways of being, is one focus of intercultural communication, and can be aided by cultural studies (see Samovar andPorter, 1988, esp. Part 4; Bennett, 1998). At the same time, this process engages us insome of the most central tasks of philosophy - that of identifying our and othersworldviews (our most fundamental assumptions regarding reality, identity, values,etc.), acknowledging the validity of differing beliefs, and attempting to determine for ourselves just what we may hold to be true in a new synthesis of views. In Plato's well-known allegory of the cave, this process involves precisely leaving the world of one'severyday experience - one's own city or culture. In the religious stories of many

cultures, this task is central to the process of growing up. Or, in a more homelymetaphor, the scholars and researchers who presented and discussed at CATaC'98described themselves as intellectual mutts - as hybrids and cross-breeds who could not be categorized within a single discipline.A democratic global village may indeed result from the diffusion of CMC technologiesimbued with Western values and preferences. But as the research reviewed here makesclear, democracy will not follow simply because these technologies are made available,as the claims of technological determinism would have it. Rather, the "soft determinism"



supported by these studies makes clear that a host of additional factors are necessaryfor the emergence of democratic societies. In other words: the inadequacies of technological determinism and technological instrumentalism mean that the goal of anelectronic global village requires us to attend not simply to the technologies involved, but, more fundamentally, to the social context of the use of these technologies.

In particular: a new form of cosmopolitanism developed among the users of thesetechnologies would appear to be a crucial factor in the development of a globaldemocracy. This cosmopolitanism, first of all, is not the allegedly inevitable result of simple exposure to CMC technologies, but rather the explicit aim of an extensive process of education and socialization prior to the development and use of thesetechnologies.There are historical precedents for this cosmopolitanism in previous cultural experience.To begin with, it is arguable that cultures have largely worked as dynamic entities: to agreater or lesser degree and at varying speeds, most cultures of the world are in an on-going process of losing elements of cultural habit, practice, belief, and values – whilesimultaneously absorbing and creating new such elements, often as "hybrids" that result

from grafting such elements from neighboring cultures. In parallel with such dynamiccultural dissolution/accretion – in the past, there have always been a few who haveexplored and adopted to "other" cultures and new cultural mixes: the cosmopolitans,citizens of the world, who have learned to live beyond the boundaries of a particular cultural domain. What is different now is not that CMC technologies are continuing this process of stirring up cultural pots – but that they are doing so on a global scale, and ata perhaps unimaginable speed (indeed, as Sandbothe [1999] makes clear, to the pointof eliminating traditional notions of "time" altogether). Because of this scope and speed,it would seem that the process of cultural intermixing now requires that not just the few, but the many – anyone who desires to participate in a global society – must become acultural "polybrid." Not just a hybrid (the result of mixing two cultures) but a polybrid.To remain ethnocentric – especially for those of us already within the cultural domaindefining much of contemporary Internet and Web culture – is only to conspire with acultural imperialism, the homogenization of McWorld. Most of us, not just a few, willneed to become intellectual mutts and multicultural persons.Such polybrid cosmopolitanism contasts in particular with the uncritical"cosmopolitanism" of the cybersurfing "cultural tourist." Consistent with the valuesencoded by a Western culture of capitalism and commodification, the cybertourist sees"culture" as merely occasions for stimulation and entertainment – a form of eating out inan "ethnic" restaurant: one consumes something "different," one's palate is mildlystimulated – but then one pays the bill and goes home to the familiar. There follows no

enriched understanding of the whole complex of beliefs, values, views, and language(s)that make up a different culture – no challenge to one's own, most deeply seated beliefs.Rather, "the other" is represented merely as another consumable resource, to beassimilated without resistance. As this paper has demonstrated, technology and itsembedded values are not the unstoppable force credited by technological determinism: but the cultural consumer may be closer to the Star Trek image of the Borg – a "culture"that consumes all the diverse cultural capital it encounters, reducing it to a singlehomogenous sameness.



As Plato's allegory of the cave suggests, philosophy may play a crucial role in educatingthe multicultural persons who, unlike the cultural consumers fostered by a single Internetculture, must now create senses of identity that stretch comfortably across the boundaries of multiple cultures. Philosophy, as I hope this paper has demonstrated,works to uncover and critique the foundational assumptions defining specific cultural

worldviews. It further can play a central role in re-constructing individual and collectiveworldviews that emerge from the debris of cultural collisions.

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Documents

Cultural Collisions and Collusions in the Electronic Global Village: From McWorld and Jihad to Intercultural Cosmopolitanism