Culture and Global Networks: Hope for a Global Ethics?

Abstract

INTRODUCTION From Global Village to Electronic Metropolis At the height of 1990s, optimism regarding the rapidly expanding Internet and World Wide Web, Marshall McLuhan's vision of a global village seemed within more or less easy reach. By wiring the world, it was argued in many ways, we would enter into the ‘secondary orality of electronic culture’ (Ong 1988) and thereby open up an electronic information superhighway that would realize a genuinely global village – one whose citizens would enjoy the best possibilities of democratic politics, social and ethical equality, freedom of expression, and economic development. This optimism, however, was countered by increasing tensions in the economic, political and social arenas between two contrasting developments. On the one hand, the phenomena of globalization – including, for example, growing internationalization and interdependencies of markets – appear to lead to increasing cultural homogenization . As terms for this homogenization such as ‘McWorld’ (Barber 1995) or ‘Disneyfication’ (Hamelink 2000) suggest, it is strongly shaped by the consumer and entertainment cultures of Western nations. On the other hand, and at least in part in reaction against real and perceived threats to given cultural traditions and identities, new (or renewed) efforts to defend and sustain these identities and traditions were seen by some to lead to fragmentation and indeed violence – most famously and disastrously, of course, in the attacks of September 11, 2001 against the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.