Return to APA Newsletters IndexThe following appeared in Volume 97, Number 2 (Spring, 1998) of the APA Newsletters
Internet: International or Interventional?
Jon Dorbolo
Inventor/philosopher Buckminster Fuller made a proposal for the United States Bicentennial celebration of 1976. He proposed that the United States host a party to which every person in the world would be invited. The power of Fuller's thought is that it was never idle; his proposal included a plan demonstrating that such an event is practically possible. He calculated the details of transporting, situating, feeding, communicating, etc. the 2.5 billion people on planet as well as the funding for the project. At first glance such an idea seems preposterous, then Fuller shows how it is realizable and a wondrous insight sets in. On one hand, throwing a party for the planet was the political equivalent of the technological project that put people on the moon. On the other hand, it stands as an affirmative antithesis to an earlier, but equally, ambitious political and technological global project: the Nazi Final Solution.
Twenty years later, another proposal of grand global political and technological ambition is underway. The internet is proposed as a worldwide, decentralized computer system by which every person in the world (some 6 billion now) may communicate with any others at any time. Appearing preposterous hype to some, this project is being demonstrated as practically attainable by cyber-missionaries like Dimitri Negroponte, busy weaving a satellite uplink access web across the African continent under the 2B1 Foundation (Chaired by his cyber-philosopher Dad, Nicholas), see http://www.2b1.com/. The possibility of a truly global internet raises for some nightmarish implications of complete technological control. Whether pessimist or optimist, one issue stands out from the enveloping internet: Can (and should) the identities of the world's cultures survive the dominance of a global communication technology? Philosophy and Computers sets out to open these questions in this featured section. Three commentators from three distinct cultures provide responses.
Characterizing culture involves well known philosophical problems. We do know from history that the interactions of geographically distinct people typically have profound impacts on their cultures. We also know that these impacts can be profitable for some and disastrous for others. Moreover, however we conceive to delineate a culture, we can take some practices as crucial to the identity of that culture. Significant among these are protocols of exchange embodied in language, religion, economy, morals, institutions, and customs. Change those protocols significantly, and the identity of the culture has changed. Silvia Austerlic's "Internet, Emergent Culture and Design" describes elements of a process by which cultures may design their own uses of the internet, hence the cultural changes they undertake.
The internet poses the possibility of a meta-protocol among the cultures of the world. Just as the technical internet strives for platform independence in serving different forms of computer systems, operating systems, languages, file types, etc., the social internet raises the possibility of a medium of exchange among people from different cultures. In a way, the global internet presents the idea of a culture of cultures; protocols that allow for dynamic exchanges among billions of people irrespective of geography or time. I see three possibilities for this prospect:
Global culture can fail: lack of interest, political commitment, or value might leave the internet a large but strictly localized phenomenon.
Global culture can dominate
Global culture
Philosophers concerned with the global internet typically focus on the conditions of domination and adaptation, investigating the possibilities of local cultures collaborating as members of a global culture. Soraj Hongladarom explores this theme in "On Internet and Cultural Differences." His argument for the claim that local cultures and global culture are not mutually exclusive, but partake of different "realities" is an interesting solution to domination.
The U.S. is the grandmaster of the internet in terms of technology and content. Thus it is appropriate to consider the threats that a U.S. dominated internet culture may bring. One type of threat is prescriptive. Through design biases in the technology and implementation policies, it is possible to limit uses of the internet to those who accept the values implicit in the system. This is the internet equivalent of the colonial occupations, military hegemony, and industrial acquisitions that implement U.S. super-power status.
Another type of threat is consumptive. The power of U.S. economy is effective in appropriating other cultures as resources for production and profit. This is most clearly seen in the entertainment industry where musical, artistic, and literary traditions of other cultures are "mined" for unexploited material that can be processed and mass-marketed. The processing inevitably revises the traditional elements to fit U.S. values, resulting in falsifications of the traditions. Moreover, mass marketing projects the falsified version into the public consciousness in such a way that from a state of ignorance about a people, we form an initial picture of their culture based on a false image. In this way, the cultural identity transits from an unknown to an unknowable state (the false picture being an irreplaceable mediator) and the appropriated culture experiences pressures to change in accordance with the manufactured caricature of it. Native American Indian people experience this when reservation tourists complain that the inhabitants just aren't Indian enough. In "Cosmopolitan Ideal or Cybercentrism? A Critical Examination of the Underlying Assumptions of 'the Electronic Global Village'" Charles Ess tracks the trail of several U.S. cultural values that may pose prescriptive and consumptive threats on global internet culture.
Having gone this far to pose the threat of the U.S. acting as sys admin to the world, it is fair to recognize an assumption that underlies much of the discussion in the U.S. over pessimistic and optimistic prospects of the global internet; that free market selection is the primary operating principle of all exchange, be it ideas, traditions, emotions, loyalties, identities, and so on. This assumption is implicit in many discussions of the global internet, supposing that for better or worse every culture so engaged will find itself competing with other cultures for integrity and identity. There are alternate purposes for discourse and exchange from competition. Very possibly, other cultures (including U.S. sub-cultures) will find uses of the global internet communication and multi-media environment that simply do not enter into the game of market competition. Verily, it is to our benefit that we should embark on a serious self-examination of motive and method in constructing a global internet. And yet, we should strive to avoid the hubris that we are capable, by design or ignorance, to singly determine the course of any culture, especially a global one. We could throw Buckminster Fuller's planet party, but parties very often do not turn out as planned.
The three articles in this featured section, "Internet: International or Interventional?," exemplify the diversity of approaches to the topic. Each author writes from within a culture and addresses social and philosophical implications for that culture given the global internet. Their contributions are powerful and may be effective in stimulating new discussions and study. Still, a caveat: each of these authors is already a full-fledged internet citizen. That is how they were recognized, contacted, and communicated with by this Editor, whose internet allegiance is blatant. What different conceptions of and responses to the topic we may have from a collection of strangers to the internet or even enemies of the internet is yet to be determined. Thus plants an idea that may soon reach fruition within this forum.
NEWSLETTER ON PHILOSOPHY AND COMPUTERS