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Introduction: What’s Culture Got to Do with It? 23

cultures. Such a model stands as a middle ground between cultural
conservativism and isolationism (Jihad) versus radical and revolu-
tionary cultural transformation. In doing so, it further points to the
central importance of embodiment in our understanding human be-
ings as participants in and shapers of cultural traditions. By con-
trast, the enthusiasts’ emphasis on the radical transformations to be
brought about through the rise of cyberspace often rest on a kind of
cyber-gnosticism—a dualistic (indeed, Manichean!) opposition be-
tween body (as implicated in the web of real-life relationships, com-
munities, 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 endorsed escape from real-
life gender discrimination into the ostensibly gender-blind and gen-
der-equal domain of cyberspace; it is further at work in the
libertarian rejection of real-life political communities, including their
limits on free speech, by such spokesmen for the American Internet
culture as John Perry Barlow, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. 26 It may not be accidental that such Manichean/
Gnostic contempt for the body can be found alongside the Manichean
dualities emphasizing that salvation can only be found by escaping
the body in cyberspace—especially given the prevailing context of an
American discourse defined largely by just such Manichean dualism.
By turning instead to a recognition of the role of embodiment as in-
tertwined with the ways in which culture has us communicate and
interact with technology, we may develop theoretical understandings
of our connection with and freedom from body and culture more con-
sonant with the middle course of both preserving and moving beyond
our local cultures. 27

Preliminary Conclusions: Cultural Collisions, Cultural
Hybrids, and Intellectual Mutts—Considerations for
Becoming Citizens in the Electronic Global Village

Physicists seek to infer the properties of otherwise hidden particles
by carefully examining what happens when these particles collide at
high energies. Encountering a culture distinct from one’s own—a
culture whose patterns of life, including language, customs, and val-
ues, may differ radically from those defining the world one has pre-
viously inhabited—involves analogous collisions. Collisions occur
between underlying assumptions, including basic ethical and politi-
cal values and communicative styles that make up the worldview