Fighting Homogenization: The Global Infiltration of Technology and the Struggle to Preserve Cultural Distinctiveness

Abstract

While technology and globalization continue to pervade every aspect of the world, the scope for the sustenance of national or regional culture is rapidly disappearing. This paper will seek to use the lessons and experiences obtained through the controversies in the use of Direct Broadcasting Satellites in its more initial years and apply the same to the Internet to assess its effect on the culture of developing States.The eventual thesis proposed here argues that the freedom of information upheld through technology, and the human right to culture need not be seen as perpendicular interests, but that the latter may be secured by its active participation in the market place of ideas (or cultures) i.e. by its projection rather than protection. Further, by drawing analogies with the evolution of principles for the protection of the environment, this paper offers a psychological framework for the development of a larger normative standard on which developing nations can base their struggle to correct the existing technological imbalance and demand technology transfer and knowledge sharing as a matter of right and thereby ultimately, competitively project their culture.