Page 325 - Culture Technology Communication

308 Soraj Hongladarom

and the Internet technologies. How, in particular, do local cultures
take to the Internet and other forms of computer-mediated commu-
nication such as the Bulletin Board System (BBS)? Does the Internet
represent an all unifying force, turning all cultures within its domain
into one giant superculture where everything becomes the same?
Does the idea of the Internet and other forms of computer-mediated
communication carry with it cultural baggage of the West, such as de-
mocracy and individualism?
This paper attempts to provide some tentative answers to these
vexing questions. It presents a case study of one local culture, that of
Thailand, in computer-mediated communication. More specifically,
it presents a case study of the Usenet newsgroup on Thailand and its
culture, soc.culture.thai, in order to find out whether and, if so, how
Thai cultural presuppositions affect the received underlying ideas of
the CMC technologies. Then we shall see how these answers provide
an insight into the theoretical problem of the extent to which global
computer-mediated communication could be regarded as a means to
realization of such Western ideals as liberalism, individualism, re-
spect for human rights, and democracy.
I argue in this paper that Thai cultural attitudes do affect com-
puter-mediated communication in a meaningful way. This means
the idea that the Internet would automatically bring about social
change in line with developments in the West needs to be critically
examined. It appears from the study that important presuppositions
of local cultures are very much alive, and exist alongside the im-
ported Western ideas. Which type of cultural attitudes and presup-
positions is present is more a matter of pragmatic concern, such as
whether the participants in CMC happen to find any use for a set of
ideas, than that of truth or falsity of the ideas in questions.

Internet in Thailand

Kanchit Malaivongs reports (<http://203.148.255.222/cpi/it4.htm>)
that Internet connection in Thailand first took shape in 1988 when
an e-mail-only dial-up account was set up between Prince of Song-
khla University in southern Thailand and the Australian Academic
and Research Network (AARNET) through the help of the Aus-
tralian government. A few years later in July 1992, Chulalongkorn
University set up the first permanent leased line connection and
provided services to faculty and students of the university as well as
those of some other participating universities. The cost of connection