The complex relationship between culture and technology

Telepolis

During the 4th conference on "Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication", Internet researchers from about 30 countries focused on the differences, the potential conflicts and cultural discrepancies in cyberspace understood as a "urban metropolis".

A special focus was laid on the investigation of the ICT access and usage by indigenous peoples. The ritual collective artwork of Australian aborigines seems to be endangered by a second expropriation in the anonymous global data worlds. On the other hand, a multi-lingual Internet could help to rescue small languages at the edge of extinction to survive in a kind of virtual reservoir.

Especially exciting were those presentations paying attention to alternative forms of Internet usage by the seemingly unprivileged and marginalized cultures. Thus the escape from spatially closed Internet-environments in South America or India underlined the potential creativity of these non-conventional solutions (Rodrigues). >>continue

(via ethno::log)