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Global Culture, Local Cultures, and the Internet 317

soc.culture.burma, for example, is used by Burmese dissidents liv-
ing abroad to spread information which would not be known oth-
erwise. It is no surprise that the Burmese government even
requires its citizens to ask for official permission to own a modem.
Failure to do so can make one a political prisoner. That is what
happens when governments actively attempt to stop the wishes of
its people, and it shows how potent the Internet can be as a politi-
8
cal force. It also shows that, if we take the ideas of democracy and
respect for human rights as universal, then the Internet could be
seen as a harbinger of these ideals to the areas where the ideals
are not appreciated by the authorities.
This aspect of the Internet as a harbinger of the liberal ideals
could be taken to substantiate the claim that the Internet represents
a global force spreading Western values to the world, as if it were the
destiny of the world to subscribe fully to Western ideals. However, I
think a distinction should be made between Western culture and
cosmopolitan culture. Western culture is a product of more than two
thousand years of continuously-evolving civilization. It has its own
traditions, customs, belief systems, and religions, putting it on a par
with the world’s other great civilizations, such as India or China.
Cosmopolitan culture, on the other hand, is borne out of the need for
people from different cultures to communicate or to do other things
with one another. Thus it is by nature shorn of any resources that
could be drawn from centuries of experiences. What is happening
with the Internet is perhaps not a spread of the former, but the lat-
ter. But that is hardly surprising. It is true that cosmopolitan cul-
ture originated first in the West, because the need for finding
common ground among people of disparate beliefs was first felt
there; that, however, does not mean that the two cultures are one
and the same.
Thus, when the Internet is used as a political tool, it does not
necessarily mean that it acts as a Westernizing force. The majority
of SCT contributors who criticize the Thai government are Thais,
and here the newsgroup could have been a traditional Thai coffee-
house where people gather and talk and discuss politics. The partic-
ipants in the newsgroup do not become less Thai when they surf in
cyberspace. Instead as they become more active in the affairs of their
country, and they show that they are more attached to their locales.
Moreover, as the Thai participants can use, and have indeed used,
the Internet to spread information on various aspects of their cul-
ture, such as traditional recipes and digitized traditional music and