Page 20 - Culture Technology Communication

Introduction: What’s Culture Got to Do with It? 5

mentation and use of CMC technologies, they first of all uncover the
“cosmopolitanism” of popular conceptions of an electronic global vil-
lage as paradoxically ethnocentric precisely because it ignores the
cultural dimensions of both technology and communication. Indeed,
like other forms of ethnocentrism, such popular conceptions, espe-
cially as fueled by the rapid commercialization of the Net, threaten
to further a globalization process that works only by obliterating all
cultural distinctiveness. Second, these essays provide the theoretical
and practical insights needed to foster an alternative conception of
cosmopolitanism: they suggest that what is needed for an intercul-
tural global village in which cultural differences are preserved and
enhanced while global communications are also sustained is a new
kind of cosmopolitan, one who—precisely through the recognition of
the complex interactions documented here between culture, commu-
nication, and technology—can engage in both global and local cul-
tures in ways that recognize and respect fundamental cultural
values and distinctive communicative preferences.
To see how this is so, I will first provide an overview of each
chapter, followed by a summary of some of the insights and addi-
tional questions that emerge from these, both individually and col-
lectively. In the last section, I will turn to a fuller description of the
sorts of cultural polybrids suggested by these essays, both individu-
ally and collectively, as necessary citizens in an intercultural global
village.

Overview

Part I. Theoretical Approaches: Postmodernism, Habermas,
Luhmann, Hofstede

Steve Jones, in “Understanding Micropolis and Compunity,” reviews a
number of familiar communication theorists, including Ong and
McLuhan, as he develops his own metaphors of path and field to dis-
cuss the influence and meaning of Internet messages. In particular, he
takes up Carey’s distinction between ritual and transportation models
of communication to address compunity, which he defines as the
merger of computers with communities and our sense of community.
This merger, claims Jones, is strained between the traditions and rit-
uals of real life and the kinds of communication as transportation fa-
cilitated through CMC. Jones analyzes four areas—privacy, property,
protection, and privilege—as central to possible on-line communities.