[Sigiii-l] Plaza: Cultural diversity

[Michel J. Menou]

Folks
I received this contribution for the Plaza which is rightly pointing to
the many contradictions in the current Weltanshauungen
Hope it generates some useful reflections, and hopefully further
debate.
 
Michel                          mailto:Michel.Menou at wanadoo.fr

>=========================================
>Cultural Diversity in the Information Society
>Sergei Stafeev,
>Centre of Community Networking and Information Policy Studies (CCNS) ,
>St. Petersburg, Russia
>http://www.communities.org.ru
>
>What do Cultural Diversity problems mean in the context of Information
>Society?
>
>The characteristic paradox in the description of Information Society
>is associated with the fact that the conventional sense of statements
>is often replaced by the opposite one reminding of Orwell's
>description of Newlang in  "1984".
>
>For a lot of people both in the developed and developing countries the
>modern (info)society inverts the relationship between the imaginary
>and the real. Through the media and mass entertainment real life is
>transfigured while everyday life becomes ever more uniform, banal, and
>degraded.
>
>Media and computer technologies are among the most advanced forces of
>production which are creating a new global information society. They
>may well strengthen capitalist relations of production and hegemony,
>but they also contain potential for democratizing, humanizing, and
>transforming existing inequities in the domain of class, race, and
>gender. Like most technologies, they can be used as instruments of
>domination or liberation, and can empower working people, or they can
>be used by capital as powerful instruments of domination.
>
>Indeed, the new technologies are part of the creation of a new
>capitalist global order in which media and computer technologies are
>the very vanguard and instrument of globalization, intending to bring
>corporate information and entertainment to the entire planet.
>
>On the other hand, the paradox of information society is that it
>promotes borderless communication and media technologies in the name
>of common cultural space, while at the same time defending national
>and regional boundaries in the name of diversity.
>
>Communication and media infrastructures cannot in themselves be either
>determinants or mediators of common economic and cultural spaces, they
>are just one of many social and technological determinants which vary
>from society to society and culture to culture. The infrastructure may
>be global but its applications and impacts can only be determined by
>the local human condition. The local and regional determinants include
>unemployment, poverty, exclusion and inequality. This is in addition
>to culture, language, and social and economic factors.
>
>Moreover, the development of Internet and information resources which
>allow to propagate the non-commercial information around the world
>practically without any payment is a giant positive factor
>(potentially) for information diversity.
>
>The changing relationship between society and technology affect our
>social roles as individuals, as members of our local communities, and
>as social actors in global information society. Proliferation of new
>communications technologies may help erode existing inequalities and
>divisions -- though they may well intensify class domination and
>gender, race, and class inequality and subordination. We need a new
>vision of information society which seeks social cohesion by promoting
>a culture of shared communication, values and knowledge, seeking
>coherence through valorisation of diversity.
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