Cultural Collisions and Collusions in the Electronic Global Village: From McWorld and Jihad to Intercultural Cosmopolitanism Dr.

Charles Ess Drury University Introduction In the Western context, Marshall McLuhan's notion of an "electronic global village" is a central icon. This hopeful vision of a global community, interconnected through the technological web of computer-mediated communication (CMC), will ostensibly lead to one happy global family a family enjoying transparent communication, economic prosperity, and radical new individual and political freedoms. Partly on the strength of this optimistic icon, the technologies and services of CMC are produced and consumed at an exponentially accelerating rate. The global race to implement McLuhan's vision, however, should raise for us a set of central questions, if we consider that much of CMC technology is designed in the industrialized world (first of all, of course, the United States) - and that the vast majority of Internet users (at the time of this writing, ca. 75%) are citizens of the United States. In light of these cultural origins and patterns of consumption, can we simply assume that CMC technologies - of largely North American origin and use - will mesh seamlessly with the communicative preferences and cultural values of all peoples, and thus enable a flawless and transparent global communication? Or might we rightly wonder whether culture - including not only distinctive cultural values but also specific communication styles - plays a role in the design, implementation, and use of CMC technologies? Especially given the ostensibly global intention of McLuhan's vision, it is somewhat surprising to observe that Western public discourse and even the scholarly literatures of the 1990's pertinent to these issues (philosophy of technology, communication theory, cultural studies, etc.) are largely silent on these central cultural questions. In response to this deficit, since 1997 Fay Sudweeks (Senior Lecturer in Information Technology, Murdoch University, Western Australia) and I have collaborated on a project called "Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication" (CATaC). With funding from the Swiss Technology Assessment Program and support from numerous scholarly organizations, we held our first conference in July-August, 1998, at the Science Museum (London). To our knowledge, the conference was the first of its kind an international gathering of some 60 scholars and researchers from 18 countries, representing both a wide range of cultures (North/South, East/West, developed/developing) and disciplines (philosophy, culture studies, social studies, communication studies, and Information Technology) devoted to discussion of both theoretical approaches to and insights from praxis regarding the complex interactions between culture, communication, and technology (Ess, 1998: <http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac98/01_ess.html>). CATaC '98 issued in a series of publications as well as a second conference in July, 2000 at Murdoch University, Western Australia (see <www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac00/>). In the following, I draw on CATaC papers and related scholarship in philosophy of technology, communication theory, and intercultural studies, as these illuminate the culturally-related questions surrounding the "electronic global village" as an icon of Western discourse. This research helps uncover and shed critical light on two of the central philosophical underpinnings of McLuhan's notion and its postmodern relatives.

The first of these, technological instrumentalism , assumes that technology is valuefree and thereby culturally neutral "merely a tool." By contrast, technological determinism claims that technology constitutes an unstoppable force, one that will "steamroll" over given cultural values (Jones, 1998). Technological determinism, that is, underlies the utopian vision of the electronic global village, insofar as enthusiasts often presume that the introduction of CMC technologies in the form of the Internet and the World Wide Web will inevitably issue in such Western values as preferences for individualism, equality, freedom of expression, and democratic polity. At the same time, however, technological determinism underlies dystopian visions of our technologicallymediated future, as in the Star Trek character of the Borg. Indeed, technological determinism raises a very real-world specter - the apparent dilemma between the culturally homogenous "McWorld" (resulting from the global spread of CMC technologies as these impose a specific set of cultural values and communicative preferences) vs. "Jihad" (the fragmenting, sometimes violent efforts to preserve cultural identity [Barber, 1993]). I propose to test these philosophical positions - and thus their political consequences in light of the praxis of CMC, i.e., in terms of the cultural impacts of these technologies as they are implemented - and sometimes reshaped - in diverse cultural settings. In particular, I examine whether or not these technologies indeed inevitably democratize. First of all, this research uncovers a range of cultural values that are indeed embedded in contemporary CMC technologies, and thus that conflict, sometimes radically, with the prevailing cultural values and communicative preferences of diverse cultures - especially the cultures of Asia. In the face of these conflicts, however, various cultures have developed a number of strategies for resisting and reshaping the values favored by CMC technologies, in order to sustain and even enhance their distinctive values and preferences. To paraphrase Star Trek: resistance is not futile! These results from praxis thus undermine both technological instrumentalism and technological determinism, pointing towards a philosophical middle ground that we can call, following Don Ihde (1973), soft determinism . This philosophical middle ground, moreover, points to a way out of the political dilemma issuing from technological determinism - the apparently intractable choice between McWorld vs. Jihad. Rather, a middle ground - originally described by Thai philosopher Soraj Hongladarom in terms of a global but "thin" Internet culture conjoined with a "thick" local culture - may allow us to use CMC technologies for both global communications and the preservation and enhancement of distinctive cultural values. Soft determinism and the possibility of avoiding McWorld vs. Jihad means, however, that much depends on the values and choices of the users. In other words, these results thus turn our focus from the technologies to their social context of use - i.e., the individual users and their ethical/ social/ political/ cultural orientation. I argue by way of conclusion that if a global village is to emerge that not only overcomes its selfcontradictory philosophical underpinnings, but also thereby achieves a middle ground that avoids McWorld and Jihad the citizens of such a village will need to become more than simply cultural tourists whose Net-mediated interactions with "other" cultures remain superficial and consumer-oriented. Precisely to avoid the dangers of ethnocentrism in cyberspace ("cybercentrism") and its affiliated cultural imperialism will

require cosmopolitans, "citizens of the world," who recognize and learn to move among a wide range of the diverse cultures and communicative systems that will make up a genuinely pluralistic global village. In addition, these cosmopolitans will have a clear understanding of the especially philosophical elements of diverse cultural worldview (including diverse cultural preferences regarding the individual vis--vis the collective, diverse notions of human identity as bound up with cultural beliefs regarding gender and the nature of embodiment ) as well as culturally diverse communicative preferences. Such understanding will make possible the multiple interactions in praxis among a wide diversity of cultures and peoples that constitute communication in a genuinely pluralistic electronic global village. 1. Philosophical foundations of "the electronic global village" and the democratization claim. A central justification for CMC technologies is the claim that these technologies facilitate a democratizing form of communication i.e., communication that flattens traditional hierarchies, expands freedom of individual expression, and gives everyone a voice in a global society. Such claims obviously appeal to core values of North American culture. More broadly, the conception of an electronic global village appears to rest on two contradictory assumptions. On the one hand, McLuhan (1965) presumed that the technologies that would facilitate the emergence of the electronic global village were themselves morally neutral or value-free. That is, such technologies are presumed neither to embed nor foster any given set of ethical or cultural values: as morally neutral, the only question that can then be put regarding technologies are the ends or goals to which they serve as means. This view of technology is discussed by philosophers of technology as technological instrumentalism . On the other hand, especially popular views of CMC technologies seem to presuppose a technological determinism . Such a view sees technology and whatever effects follow in its wake as possessing their own autonomous power, one that cannot be resisted or turned by individual or collective decisions. Proponents presume that the introduction of CMC technologies will inevitably convey and reinforce cultural values - specific preferences, say, for free speech and individualism, particularly in the case of the Internet and the Web, as centralized control of information conveyed through these technologies is very difficult. Interestingly, this same philosophical presumption underlies an apparently opposite vision: in the inverse dystopian image, captured powerfully in the images of the Borg in Star Trek, technology is likewise an unstoppable force. Once infected by the Borg implants, all humanity (specifically such qualities as individuality and compassion) is lost as one becomes seamlessly integrated into the single-minded machinery of the Collective. Such science-fiction portrayals unfortunately capture, moreover, the real-world fears of those who see CMC technologies as central engines in a global but homogenous McWorld that will override and eliminate local choice and distinctive cultural values (Barber, 1993, 1995). The popular image of an electronic global village, as implicating both technological instrumentalism and technological determinism, thus rests on two fundamental but contradictory claims regarding technology. Beyond this underlying contradiction, both claims are themselves open to doubt - especially in light of what happens in praxis as CMC technologies are diffused in diverse cultural settings. We will see how this is so, beginning with a focus on the claim of technological instrumentalism. 2. Are CMC technologies value-neutral? Contra technological instrumentalism

2a. The role of culture in technology diffusion: the North American and European contexts Two case studies make clear that CMC technologies are neither value neutral nor unstoppable forces, but rather, as embedding values affiliated with specific cultures, the diffusion of these technologies in diverse cultures is fundamentally dependent on specific cultural values, including values and communication preferences defined by gender. To begin with, Stewart, Shields and Sen (1998) observe that women and minorities have historically enjoyed less access to CMC technologies. They uncover two sorts of differences in communication style appearing in listservs that help explain such disparity of access: cultural differences (first articulated by Hall between high- and low-context cultures, and supplemented here by Ting-Toomey's Face-Negotiation Theory), and gender-related differences (documented by Tannen and Herring). Their study of an in-class listserv, designed to further free and open communication among a considerable diversity of students, strikingly confirms that gender and culture nonetheless profoundly limit how far listservs may be said to be open and democratic. Secondly, Lucienne Rey (1998) studied the political differences between the four major linguistic groups of Switzerland - German, French, Italian, and Romansch - and then investigated whether these ethnic/linguistic differences also correlate with different attitudes towards technology. In fact, she found that the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the most politically and economically dominant component of the country, is at the same time the most culturally conservative - in the sense that German-speaking Swiss show less openness to and interest in the new communications technologies than their Latin compatriots. These and other examples make clear that CMC technologies are neither value-neutral nor inevitably imperialistic capable of simply steamrolling (Jones, 1998) over the values and communicative preferences characteristic of a specific culture and replacing these with the values and preferences these technologies foster. Rather, the diffusion of such technologies involves complex interactions between these two value systems. One of the first systematic studies of the interaction between culture and computing technologies was undertaken by Hofstede (1980), who developed a schema that eventually included five dimensions of national culture that appear to shape basic approaches to computing technologies. Maitland and Bauer (in press) build on Hofstede's research to empirically determine the relatively importance of cultural variables in predicting the rate of technology diffusion. Their extensive statistical study draws on a considerable range of data sources, as available for 185 countries during the time period between 1991 and 1997. They include three cultural factors in their study: uncertainty avoidance (where weak uncertainty avoidance means "What is different is seen as curious, as opposed to dangerous"), gender equality, and English language ability. In examining Internet growth between countries, they find that cultural variables are less significant in explaining adoption than economic or infrastructure variables: of these, teledensity, International Call Cost, and School Enrollment emerge as the strongest predictors - the last finding supporting the importance of education in development. For that, the cultural factor of English language ability also plays a significant role. In analyzing growth within countries, their data likewise uncovers a comparatively stronger role for economic factors - in this case, the number of PC's per capita. But cultural

factors - namely, uncertainty avoidance and gender empowerment - also play a significant role. Given that even within the Western sphere, cultural conflicts with the values embedded and fostered by CMC technologies arise (see as well Pargmann 1999; Grotenhuis 2000) we might expect that even more dramatic conflicts between the values embedded in CMC technologies and culture as Western CMC technologies are introduced in non-Western contexts. In fact, scattered reports in the literatures of communication theory described such conflicts relatively early. More recently, Sofield (2000) highlights the clear opposition between Western cultural values at work in CMC technologies and the values defining the Kiribati of Oceania: a preference for paternal rather than democratic forms of government; secrecy and central control over media vs. the openness of CMC systems; and an emphasis on community rather than the individual - an emphasis that sternly frowns on "shining," i.e., a single individual standing out, as s/he might do if s/he acquired new technology and information resources. While the Kiribati may seem to serve as a marginal example - their example is marginal in a crucial philosophical sense: by delimiting the boundaries of Western cultural values, the Kiribati puncture the otherwise easy ethnocentrism that presumes that all the world will indeed embrace - whether freely or by force - Western CMC technologies. Such cultural differences in fundamental values and the challenges they pose to the claims of technological instrumentalism (as well as to technological determinism, and attendant hopes for an electronic global village) can be seen further in praxis in several recent case studies in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo, and Thailand. 2b. Conflicts in praxis between East and West Japan. Contrary to the view that technologies are value and culturally neutral, Lorna Heaton (1998) shows how cultural values and communication styles specific to Japan are incorporated in the design of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems. Heaton highlights the importance of non-verbal cues and the direction of gaze in Japanese culture as an example of Hall's 'high context/low content' category of cultural communication style, in contrast with Western preferences for direct eye contact and 'low context/high content' forms of communication. She also notes the Japanese interest in pen-based computing, speech synthesis, virtual reality interfaces, etc., as resulting not only from the physical difficulties of using a Roman keyboard to input Japanese, but also the larger cultural preference for high context in communication. (These results are further consistent with the findings of Gill, 1998.) Korea. Sunny Yoon (in press) counters the familiar portrayal of the Internet as a medium that will engender greater democracy, especially in the form of an electronic "public sphere" required for democracy, according to Habermas. In this way, her research on Korean praxis directly contradicts the theoretical hope, expressed by Becker and Wehner (1998), that CMC technologies might realize at least elements of Habermas' conception of democracy. She notes the ways in which the Net, especially as it becomes ever more commercialized, may work rather as a controlling mechanism for capital and power. Here, she takes up Foucault once again (see Yoon, 1996), along with Bordieu's notion of Habitus, as frameworks for analyzing power as manifested in the workings and impacts of the Net. In her quantitative study of Korean newspaper reports on the Internet and Internet-

based activities, Yoon shows that Korean journalism fails to encourage the use of the Net as a medium of participatory communication. Rather, Korean reporting contributes to the commercialization of the Net and thereby, some argue, unequal access to and distribution of information resources. Yoon then turns to a series of ethnographic interviews with young Koreans ("Gen-Xers"). These interviews demonstrate that the Internet exercises symbolic or positive power - including symbolic violence in Bordieu's sense - as it shapes educational rules and linguistic habits. In particular, Korean students accept the dominance and importance of English on the Net without question. Language thereby becomes a cultural capital that exercises "symbolic power over the cultural have-nots in the virtual world system," a cultural capital that induces a "voluntary subjugation." Moreover, Yoon documents how individuals take up the Internet, not because of its promise of greater equality and democracy, or even utility, but because it increases their status, and thereby their distance from and power over others. As well, the comparative expertise of young people gives them considerable power over their elders because teachers, principals, and parents rely more and more on the younger generation to help them learn how to use computers, design institutional documents and Web pages, etc. Contrary to the presumption that the Internet only democratizes, Yoon demonstrates that the Internet, by shaping Habitus in these ways, can lead either to resistance or subjugation, to democratic communication, or (cultural) capitalist dominance. Consequently, she argues, we must better understand the concrete processes of how the Internet functions as the Habitus of people in their everyday lives before attempting to decide which of these two directions the Internet might take us. Indonesia. Abdat and Pervan (2000) address research on Group Support Systems (GSS) to show the contrast between Western cultural values and those characteristic of Indonesia namely, relatively high power distance, low individualism, and weak uncertainty avoidance. Under these circumstances, the practice of using GSS technologies to reduce power distance effects - e.g., through anonymous comments - can backfire. Especially given the importance of saving face (a Confucian value) and high collectivism, people prefer to arrive at significant meetings with all the details already arranged. Negotiations, including criticisms, are better undertaken in pre-meetings. But here, anonymity, while reducing power distance, can also thereby disrupt the important cultural value of low individualism : individuals often want to have their ideas and suggestions reviewed and approved by a superior before "broadcasting" them to the larger group. This suggests that anonymity should be a "switchable" feature of GSS systems - i.e., one that can be turned on or off, depending on specific cultural preferences and needs. (Similar comments regarding Thai culture, also marked by high power distance and weak uncertainty avoidance, are made by Thanasankit and Corbitt, 2000.) Malyasia. Nasrin Rahmati's study of two decision-making groups utilizing a Group Support Systems (GSS) environments (2000). GSS involves both social and technical ways of facilitating group interaction and improving group performance. But among previous studies on GSS, only three include culture as a variable. Rahmati argues, however, that 'culture' is the primary source of the cognitive base - a base that includes individuals' values, beliefs, and standards - through which individuals interpret and experience the world, as well as make value judgments and decisions regarding competing alternatives. As such, 'culture' is hence a central variable in determining how well GSS systems can "work" (i.e., achieve their goals of facilitating group interaction and decision-making) - and it thus becomes critical to understand the role of culture

if GSS systems are to be designed effectively. Rahmati builds on earlier literature (Hofstede, Schwartz and Bilsky) to develop her own model of cultural analysis as then applied to Malaysia and Australia. Rahmati's nine cultural factors include the "religious commitment factor," defined as the relation of an individual to any ideological system, in this case a religious system, and it admits of different dimensions or types of variation; the individual's acceptance or rejection of the beliefs of the system (Orthodoxy), his or her orientation toward other persons with respect to his or her beliefs (Fanaticism ), and the significance of their beliefs to their self-conception (Importance) .(262f.) The importance of the religious factor becomes evident in Rahmati's initial analysis of Australian and Malaysian cultures: while there are relatively small (if any) differences between the two in terms of, say, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, etc. - the two cultures are clearly different in terms of religious commitment as religious commitment figures more significantly in Malaysia than Australia. Indeed, Rahmati found that striking contrasts emerged between Malaysian and Australian students who approached the same decision-making problem in a similar GSS environment with regard to religious commitment (more than twice as significant for Malaysians than for Australians) and locus of control (defined as "the tendency of the individual to be in control of his or her own life" - a factor that was nearly twice as important for Australians than for Malaysians). As well, the high fatalism factor (the belief that events, including the consequences of one's own actions, are largely beyond one's control and in the hands of larger, external forces) for Malaysian students seems correlated with a greater willingness to take risks (because the consequences are the responsibility of external forces). By contrast, the Australians, who scored higher with regard to the locus of control factor, and thus felt more responsible for the consequences of their decisions, required more "air time" to discuss their points of view and the details of each alternative, in order to reduce the risk of bad decisions. Finally, Rahmati describes Malaysia as a tight society - i.e., one marked by "higher uncertainty avoidance, religious commitment, and collectivism, as well as high traditionalism and external locus of control (Fatalism)." (269f.) Australia, by contrast, is a loose society, one marked by high individualism, low traditionalism, and high internal locus of control. In light of these differences, keeping face - supporting the authority and status of especially senior members of a group - is culturally much more significant in Malaysia than Australia, and works to encourage public agreement and repression of questions and disagreements with the opinions expressed by seniors. Hence, a GSS system for Malaysia (and similarly tight societies) would need to include ways of encouraging lower status group members to express their views without knowingly calling into question the views of seniors - e.g., through anonymous submission of comments, etc. (As we have seen, however, Abdat argues for a "switchable" anonymity in the Indonesia context.) Finally, Rahmati asserts that her results show that GSS technologies "can change the social behavior of groups from different cultures and this change seems to be more pronounced for a sample from from tight societies than for a sample from loose societies." (271, emphasis added, CE) With regard to the larger debate concerning technological determinism vs. technological instrumentalism - Rahmati's results argue in

favor of some form of technological determinism: technologies can impact values and behaviors - i.e., they are not (as technological instrumentalism would have it) culturally neutral. 2c. Interlude: East vs. West vis--vis Communication and Culture These analyses taken together not only contradict the claims of technological instrumentalism: they further point to a cluster of cultural values and communicative preferences characteristic of South East Asian cultures. Abdat (2000), Rahmati (2000), and Thanasankit (2000) bring to the foreground the central importance of face-saving (as part of Confucian values); high uncertainty avoidance ; high collectivism/low individualism; and high power distance, as distinctive cultural values - values not shared, in general, by more Western cultures and countries (and thus, most IT developers and designers) - that constitute the social context of use of these technologies. They make clear, moreover, that these values directly affect - often in unintended and negative ways - the implementation and use of CMC technologies originally designed in the West and thus shaped by very different Western cultural values and communicative preferences. In particular, these studies, both individually and collectively, are immediately consistent with Maitland and Bauer's study that shows that especially low uncertainty avoidance, and gender empowerment are the most significant cultural variables contributing to diffusion of IT. More broadly, beyond undermining the claims of technological instrumentalism - these multiple contrasts between Western and South East Asian cultural values and communicative preferences make clear that Western IT designers and developers run the danger of engaging in a cultural imperialism that would impose Western cultural values and communication preferences as they design CMC technologies that embed and thus reinforce Western cultural values and communication preferences. To avoid such imperialism, designers must become aware of these contrasts and shape CMC technologies in light of the values and preferences characteristic of end-users in South East Asia (and in this way, follow the example of the Japanese redesign of Western CSCW documented by Heaton 1998). 2d. Between McWorld and Jihad: an Eastern Model In his study of Thai Usenet discussion, Soraj Hongladarom (1998) addresses not only the contrasts between Western and Eastern values (thus countering the claim of technological instrumentalism: see also Hongladarom 2000), but also describes a model, based in the Thai praxis, that provides both a philosophical framework and strategic processes for escaping the otherwise intractable dilemma between McWorld and Jihad (and thereby countering the claims of technological determinism). He examines two threads of discussion developed in a Thai Usenet newsgroup, one dealing with critiques of the Thai political system and the other with the question of whether Thai should be a language, perhaps the only language, used on the newsgroup. In contrast with concerns that CMC technologies will erase local cultures and issue in a monolithic global cultures, Hongladarom argues that the Internet facilitates two different kinds of communication: (i) communication that helps reinforce local cultural identity and community (in part, as this communication fulfills what Carey calls the 'ritual function', i.e. strengthening community ties); and (ii) communication that creates an 'umbrella cosmopolitan culture' required for communication between people from different cultures. Hongladarom further suggests that we distinguish between a Western culture which endorses human rights,

individualism, egalitarianism and other values of a liberal democratic culture (a 'thick' culture in Walzer's terms), and the cosmopolitan culture of the Internet as neutral (a 'thin' culture). The Thai experience suggests that the Internet does not force the importation of Western cultural values. Instead, Thai users are free to take up such issues and values if they wish, and they can do so while at the same time preserving their cultural identity. 3. The role of cultural values in IT design and implementation: contra technological determinism. 3a. Does the Internet Democratize? Theory It is worth nothing that both philosophers of technology and communication theorists reject technological determinism on a variety of grounds. In particular, the deterministic and materialist frameworks underlying technological determinism ignore the ability of individual persons to respond to and mediate larger cultural and technological influences in various ways (cf. Hall, 1992, Lee et al., 1995). But this ability is documented especially in Gudykunst et al (1996), who found that individual communication preferences are not only the behavioral result of larger cultural preferences (along a spectrum of collectivist societies/low-content messages to individualist societies/high-content messages), but also correlate with individual self-construals and preferences. As well, a number of important studies likewise provide examples in praxis that counter the presumption of technological determinism. On a theoretical level, one of the strongest contemporary justifications for the democratizing effect of CMC technologies is affiliated with Habermas' theory of communicative reason (see Ess, 1996). More recently, Barbara Becker and Joseph Wehner (1998) take up Nicholas Luhmann's analysis of cyberspace as chaotic in ways familiar to readers of postmodernism e.g., such technologies tend to fragment and decenter our individual and collective senses of identity, etc. While endorsing Luhmann's analysis, Becker and Wehner also find Habermas' conception of Teilffentlichkeiten ("partial publics") as a theoretical counterweight to postmodern decentering a counterweight crucial for especially any claim that CMC technologies democratize. For Habermas, these partial publics include professional organizations, university clubs, special interest groups, etc., as loci of discourses that contribute to a larger democratic process in modern societies. While recognizing certain problems with how far such partial publics may be instantiated through CMC technologies, Becker and Wehner see this notion as capturing an important component of how CMC technologies may sustain (within limits) specific interest groups as part of a larger democratic process. 3b. Does the Internet Democratize? Praxis Two recent case studies of how CMC technologies impact specific national cultures stand as examples of at least limited instantiation in praxis of the democratizing effect as endorsed theoretically by Becker and Wehner. Michael Dahan documents how the Internet and the Web have contributed to a greater openness and support of democratic values in Israel; Deborah Wheeler provides considerable evidence for similar impacts, especially with regard to women, in Kuwaiti society. Dahan (1999) explains in considerable detail the history of Israel's social and cultural value system one that, until recently at least, has (of necessity) preferred the cluster of values associated with national security ("the militaristic values of authoritarian, hierarchical organizations trained in the use of violence") over against democratic civic

values (including equality, freedom of speech and press, and critical debate). In particular, the historical origins of Israel as a "garrison state" have shaped a culture emphasizing respect for the military, national security, and the importance of censorship in protecting the state. (These value preferences have been confirmed by polls as recently as 1993.) Dahan is clear that many factors including individualization, economic liberalization, the Oslo Accords and the peace process contribute to a greater openness in contemporary Israeli society, including open civilian critique of the military. And Dahan sensibly observes that it is much to early to assess just how far the Internet and the Web have contributed to a transformation of Israeli culture in the direction of democratic civic virtues. Nonetheless, Dahan documents several incidents that exemplify how CMC technologies have forced open what was previously closed and secret. For Dahan, it is clear that these technologies have indeed played a significant role in Israel's development as a democratic society. The proponents' claims regarding CMC technologies as democratizing technologies at least as they are accompanied by other significant social factors would hence seem confirmed in this case. Dahan's analysis suggests that enthusiasts' claims that CMC technologies may succeed in spreading Western cultural values of individualism, equality, and democracy at least as these technologies work in a country and cultural context (Israel) already deeply implicated in Western cultural values. Similar conclusions are drawn by Deborah Wheeler (in press). Wheeler tests the familiar promises of CMC technologies - that they will promote democracy, prosperity, and equality, including gender equality - by way of a careful ethnographic study of Kuwaiti women and their use of the Internet. Her case study is valuable first of all as it sheds light on a little researched but critically important series of intersections: Islam and sharply defined gender roles vis--vis a communication technology hailed by Western feminists for its promise of expanding gender equality. In addition, Kuwait is especially instructive insofar as it enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Its government programmatically endorses the acquisition and distribution of the latest technologies, resulting in the highest density of Internet users per capita of any Islamic society. As well, women in Kuwait enjoy comparatively greater freedoms - including access to education, considerable success in gaining professional employment, etc. - than women in many other Muslim countries. In short, if there is resistance to new CMC technologies, such resistance is not obviously the result of infrastructure deficits, an entrenched anti-technology culture, or extreme patriarchal structures. Wheeler's analysis of how far the Internet and the Web serve the cause of gender equality shows decidedly mixed results. On the one hand, her interviews with younger women support the notion that these new technologies do have a liberating impact. For example, they allow women to converse "unescorted" with men in chat-rooms, and to meet and choose mates on their own (rather than agree to the cultural norm of arranged marriages). At the same time, however, she finds that the powerful restrictions against women speaking openly in Kuwait are directly mirrored in differences between women's and men's characteristic use of CMC technologies. As she observes, "The advent of new fora for communication do not automatically liberate communicators from the cultural vestiges which make every region particular and which hold society

together." And especially in light of other pressing problems - including rising drug abuse, divorce, and a series of social and personal problems resulting from the Iraqi occupation during the Gulf War - it is by no means clear that Western activist agendas should neatly coincide with those of women in Kuwait. These two examples from praxis confirm, to some degree, that CMC technologies can foster democracy and related values. Contrary to the claims of technological instrumentalism , these studies make clear that CMC technologies in fact embed and foster specific cultural values (individualism, freedom of expression, etc.). But further contrary to the claims of technological determinism , these examples demonstrate that CMC technologies alone are not sufficient to change fundamental cultural values: rather, such technologies must be taken up in a social context in which other factors likewise conspire to support democratization and its core values. More recent work likewise undermines the assumption of technological determinism (e.g., Sofield 2000; Thanasankit 2000; Harris et al 2000; Khoo et al 2000) as they demonstrate in the context of the East and Oceania that distinctive cultures are not necessarily overwhelmed by the cultural values and communicative preferences embedded in Western CMC technologies. Rather: individuals and cultures seem capable of resisting the imposition of such values and preferences - in part, by reshaping the design and implementation of originally Western technologies. In doing so, they echo and reiterate several contributions to CATaC'98 that demonstrate precisely this point. In particular, they resonate especially well with Hongladarom's model of negotiating the local and the global - a model that conjoins a global but "thin" Internet culture with a local "thick" culture whose values and preferences are preserved and perhaps even enhanced through carefully structured use of CMC technologies. 4. Preliminary Conclusions and Future Research Directions This extensive range of culturally diverse examples makes clear that neither technological instrumentalism nor technological determinism both underlying if contradictory assumptions of the iconic electronic global village are borne out in praxis. In particular, cultural collisions both within the Western sphere and between East and West make clear that CMC technologies designed and implemented largely within Western cultural frameworks indeed embed and abet specific cultural values, including (a) communication preferences for high-content/low context (vis--vis the preference for high-context/low content characteristic of Arabic and Asian societies) and (b) the values clustering about Western conceptions of democracy specifically, equality and the importance of the individual (vis--vis more hierarchical and communitarian values characteristic of many Eastern societies). At the same time, multiple examples of diverse cultures resisting and reshaping (if not simply marginalizing) CMC technologies demonstrate that these technologies are not unstoppable, somehow beyond the possibility of direction and control by individual and collective choice. In philosophical terms, as these papers undermine both technological determinism and technological instrumentalism, they point us in the direction of a middle ground - one described as "soft determinism" by philosopher of technology Don Ihde. This middle ground recognizes that, while technologies certainly embed values and bias users in specific directions, these are not irresistable forces. In the jargon of Star Trek, resistance is not futile. In political terms, these studies make clear that the development and implementation of

CMC technologies do not necessarily condemn us to the apparently intractable dilemma of "McWorld vs. Jihad." Rather, much along the lines of the Thai model articulated by Soraj Hongladarom, it appears possible for cultures to appropriate and reshape Western IT in ways that allow them to remain connected to a global network while preserving and enhancing their own distinctive cultural values and identity. However helpful this overview may be, it further makes clear that additional work on both the theoretical and empirical levels is needed, beginning with establishing a clear and usable definition of culture. Moreover, postmodern celebration of fragmentation and decentering aside, if the electronic global village is to attain more substance than a marketing icon in consumer society and successfully claim legitimation especially as it invokes such foundational values as individualism, freedom of expression, and democratic polity this concept needs more theoretical coherency than the current diversity of theoretical approaches (so as to include social constructivism and postmodernism as well as their chief critic Habermas, for example) seems capable of providing. In particular, our theories apparently need to take up the central conception of embodiment . The importance of gender both vis--vis personal identity and one's place in a given cultural system, clearly plays a role in how CMC technologies are designed and used. The centrality of gender thereby points to the further importance of culturally diverse notions of embodiment and thereby, membership (for better and for worse) within a given culture that has shaped one's attitudes regarding body and gender needs to be a central theme in any definition of culture concerned with the interactions between culture and technology. Indeed, the focus on embodiment and a correlative recognition that (most) human beings cannot jump out of their embodied/gendered cultural identities may work in support of Hongladarom's model of "thin" but global Internet culture coupled with "thick" local cultures. As we have seen, such a model stands as a middle ground between cultural conservativism and isolationism (Jihad) vs. radical and revolutionary cultural transformation. In doing so, it further points to the central importance of embodiment in our understanding human beings as participants in and shapers of cultural traditions. By contrast, the enthusiasts' emphasis on the radical transformations to be brought about through the rise of cyberspace often rest on a kind of cybergnosticism - a dualistic (indeed, Manichean!) opposition between body (as implicated in the web of real-life relationships, communities, etc.) and mind (as capable of full selfexpression in cyberspace). Such cyber-gnosticism is not only apparent in the (early) cyborg feminism of Donna Haraway, who endorses escape from real-life gender discrimination into the ostensibly gender-blind and gender-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. 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. By turning instead to a recognition of the role of embodiment as intertwined 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 consonant with the middle course of both preserving and moving beyond our local cultures. 5. When cultures collide on the World Wide Web: Whither the electronic global village? As anyone knows who has lived in an "other" culture , encountering a culture distinct from one's own - a culture whose patterns of life, including language, customs, and values may differ radically from those defining the world one has previously inhabited - involves fundamental collisions. Collisions occur between the underlying assumptions, including basic ethical and political values and communicative styles that make up the worldview characteristic of each culture. "Culture shock" is the name we give this experience - a shock involving precisely the realization that what has presumed, perhaps for all of one's life, to be universally human ways of talking, believing, valuing, are instead limited. Other peoples, other cultures, do and believe differently, and usually seem to thrive in doing so. As the properties of invisible particles may be inferred from the traces and debris of their collisions, so culture shock allows us to uncover the usually fundamental but tacit assumptions of our and other cultures, as it forces us to make explicit the manifold presumptions of the colliding worldviews. Such collisions, in fact, are often the beginning of a journey of discovery and synthesis. When we, as newcomers, seek to become oriented in a new place, we sort through what is radically different and what seems shared ("Everyone cooks with water," the Swiss say). Gradually, we may find that what initially seemed alien is not so strange. Indeed, we often find that some beliefs and habits of other cultures make more "sense" than our own; we may even seek to sustain those ways of being when we return to our own places. In most cases, we do not "go native" - we do not reject all of our original beliefs and values. We become, instead, what is described as multicultural (Adler, 1977) "intercultural" (Gudykunst and Kim, 1992), or "Third Culture Persons" (FinnJordan, 1998) - that is, multilingual cultural hybrids, able to travel, speak, and live (in varying degrees of facility) in more than one cultural domain. This process of making explicit and sifting through the fundamental elements of diverse worldviews, and constructing new hybrid views and ways of being, is one focus of intercultural communication, and can be aided by cultural studies (see Samovar and Porter, 1988, esp. Part 4; Bennett, 1998). At the same time, this process engages us in some of the most central tasks of philosophy - that of identifying our and others worldviews (our most fundamental assumptions regarding reality, identity, values, etc.), acknowledging the validity of differing beliefs, and attempting to determine for ourselves just what we may hold to be true in a new synthesis of views. In Plato's wellknown allegory of the cave, this process involves precisely leaving the world of one's everyday experience - one's own city or culture. In the religious stories of many cultures, this task is central to the process of growing up. Or, in a more homely metaphor, the scholars and researchers who presented and discussed at CATaC'98 described themselves as intellectual mutts - as hybrids and cross-breeds who could not be categorized within a single discipline. A democratic global village may indeed result from the diffusion of CMC technologies imbued with Western values and preferences. But as the research reviewed here makes clear, democracy will not follow simply because these technologies are made available, as the claims of technological determinism would have it. Rather, the "soft determinism"

supported by these studies makes clear that a host of additional factors are necessary for the emergence of democratic societies. In other words: the inadequacies of technological determinism and technological instrumentalism mean that the goal of an electronic global village requires us to attend not simply to the technologies involved, but, more fundamentally, to the social context of the use of these technologies. In particular: a new form of cosmopolitanism developed among the users of these technologies would appear to be a crucial factor in the development of a global democracy. This cosmopolitanism, first of all, is not the allegedly inevitable result of simple exposure to CMC technologies, but rather the explicit aim of an extensive process of education and socialization prior to the development and use of these technologies. There are historical precedents for this cosmopolitanism in previous cultural experience. To begin with, it is arguable that cultures have largely worked as dynamic entities: to a greater or lesser degree and at varying speeds, most cultures of the world are in an ongoing process of losing elements of cultural habit, practice, belief, and values while simultaneously absorbing and creating new such elements, often as "hybrids" that result from grafting such elements from neighboring cultures. In parallel with such dynamic cultural dissolution/accretion in the past, there have always been a few who have explored and adopted to "other" cultures and new cultural mixes: the cosmopolitans, citizens of the world, who have learned to live beyond the boundaries of a particular cultural domain. What is different now is not that CMC technologies are continuing this process of stirring up cultural pots but that they are doing so on a global scale, and at a perhaps unimaginable speed (indeed, as Sandbothe [1999] makes clear, to the point of eliminating traditional notions of "time" altogether). Because of this scope and speed, it would seem that the process of cultural intermixing now requires that not just the few, but the many anyone who desires to participate in a global society must become a cultural "polybrid." Not just a hybrid (the result of mixing two cultures) but a polybrid. To remain ethnocentric especially for those of us already within the cultural domain defining much of contemporary Internet and Web culture is only to conspire with a cultural imperialism, the homogenization of McWorld. Most of us, not just a few, will need to become intellectual mutts and multicultural persons. Such polybrid cosmopolitanism contasts in particular with the uncritical "cosmopolitanism" of the cybersurfing "cultural tourist." Consistent with the values encoded by a Western culture of capitalism and commodification, the cybertourist sees "culture" as merely occasions for stimulation and entertainment a form of eating out in an "ethnic" restaurant: one consumes something "different," one's palate is mildly stimulated but then one pays the bill and goes home to the familiar. There follows no enriched understanding of the whole complex of beliefs, values, views, and language(s) that make up a different culture no challenge to one's own, most deeply seated beliefs. Rather, "the other" is represented merely as another consumable resource, to be assimilated without resistance. As this paper has demonstrated, technology and its embedded values are not the unstoppable force credited by technological determinism: but the cultural consumer may be closer to the Star Trek image of the Borg a "culture" that consumes all the diverse cultural capital it encounters, reducing it to a single homogenous sameness.

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