The Cultural Geography of Cyberspace

The rapid growth of the Internet is of great cultural significance, for it has created the basis
for a massive shift in patterns of social interaction, a seedbed for new forms of human
consciousness, and a new medium for cultural change. Culture is fundamentally based on
communication, and in cyberspace we have an entirely new form of communication; uncensored,
multidirectional, written, visual, and aural.

At face value the Internet represents the leading edge of the globalization of culture. In broad
terms the culture propagated by the Internet is very much core-oriented. The Internet portends a
global culture based on English as the universal world language, with j heavy emphasis on core-area
cultural values, such as novelty, spectacle, fashionability, material consumption, and leisure. It
is unlikely, however, that the Internet will simply be a new medium through which core-area values
and culture are spread.

To begin with, the impact of the Internet is likely to be highly uneven because of the digital
divide (see Figure 2.23). Moreover, there is resistance in some places and regions to the cultural
globalization associated with cyberspace. The French and French-Canadian authorities, already
sensitive about the influence of English-language popular culture on their own, have actively
sought ways to give Francophone cybernauts access to the Internet without submitting to English,
the dominant language of Web sites. The French government has also subsidized an all-French
alternative to the Internet: Minitel, an online videotext terminal that plugs into French
telecommunication networks. A free Minitel terminal is available to anyone who stops by a France
Telecom office.

In much of Asia the Internet's basic function as an information-exchange medium clashes with local
cultures in which information is a closely guarded commodity. Whereas many U.S. World Wide Web
sites feature lengthy government reports and scientific studies, as well as lively debates about
government policy, comparable Asian sites typically offer little beyond public relations materials
from government agencies and corporations. In puritanical Singapore, political leaders, worried
that the Internet will undermine morality, have taken to reading private e-mail as part of an
all-out effort to beat back the menace of online pornography. Chinese authorities fear that the
Internet will foment political rebellion, so officials have limited access to ensure that the
Chinese portion of the Internet can easily be severed from the world in the event of political
unrest. The reluctance of major Asian organizations to put important information on their Web
sites—along with the need for Westerners to use special software to read any local language
documents that do exist—has resulted in a largely one-way flow of information, from America to
Asia.

Nevertheless, the greatest potential of the Internet in terms of cultural change resides in the
liberating and empowering potential of its vast resource of knowledge and information. By its very
nature—a decentralized and complex web of computer hosts—the Internet empowers individuals (rather
than social groups or institutions), allowing millions to say whatever they want to each other,
free (for the first rime in history) from state control. As such, it is an important vehicle for
the spread of participatory democracy to much of the world.