Internet and Culture - Essay Example

Running head: Internet & Culture Our cultures and the Internet: How has the Internet changed our cultures ___________ ________________________ ________________ Our cultures and the Internet: How has the Internet changed our cultures Introduction The spreading network, reach and penetration of the Internet have transformed the way today's global citizens' view their worlds. All of a sudden Internet has shrunk the world in size. It has changed the way people find information and altered the manner in which they have interfaces with many institutions, such as government, health care providers, the news media, and commercial enterprises. So much so that our social relations have been altered substantially. Most internet users can vouch for the fact that they have one physical circle of known persons in the communities where they have residence and second they have a virtual network of friends on the Internet that sometimes translates and descends into their physical circle of known persons. Terminology such as electronic commerce, e-health, telemedicine, and e-government was almost alien a decade back, however, same is in common parlance today. Reasons are apparent and they indicate that almost everybody is online and equally expects all other to be online too. Even popular print media comprised of major newspapers and magazines routinely devote large sections of print space linking their respective reading worlds with internet addresses. Most commercial advertising is considered incomplete without giving the address of the organizational website and emails. Shopping malls have virtual presence paralleling their brick & mortar elegances.Hotel, travel, movies and variety of entertainment can be either had online or booked online.Banks, broker houses, financial portals have websites and cater to host of financial needs at the click of a mouse. Educational libraries, virtual universities have sprung up to deliver educational products and resources of any kind right at the doorsteps of the Internet users. A growing body of government offices, market research organizations, and scholars have begun to focus on internet and carry out their activities online. With the steady growth of Internet penetration and the vast improvements in the technology backbone on which Internet resides coupled with the sometimes-fevered focus on the Internet's transformative potential, world citizens of today have augmented substantially their expectations from the Internet in the coming future. This paper has the objective of examining the pervasive influence that the Internet has on our lives and how gradually but steadily is the Internet transforming our cultures. The Issue of Culture The precise implication of the term culture is not straight forward .The concept has been variedly used in differing contexts -professional and otherwise-by several authorities. One of the earliest anthropological definitions of culture was given by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor in 1871-Culture, or civilizationis that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society (Tylor,1871). It was then in 1920 that another structured definition of "culture" was published (Wissler, 1920). Snow (1960) initiated the notion of "two cultures" in his description of differences between the humanities and the sciences. Present day anthropologists have largely rejected the conceptualization of culture as a static, bounded "entity" or set of characteristics; they ,instead, subscribe to a notion of culture as an unbounded whole, independent of time and space, embracing a multiplicity of meanings, shifting realities, and nonphysical "locales" (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997).However the most common strand in definitional aspects can be found in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary which defines culture as "Culture is "the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices " (Webster, online). Some other authors have identified additional factors, for instance, Del Galdo says, "In addition, culture can also be affected by nationality, language, history, and level of technical development." (del Galdo, 1996). Culture can distinguish one human grouping from others. Any identified culture can, thus, include their beliefs, rituals, art, technology, styles of dress, rules of behaviour, language, religion, political, economic systems and even ways of producing and cooking food. It is conceivable that various definitional categories can be deployed to make a distinction between various national cultures. "The notion of cultural dimensions originated in cross-cultural communication research done by Edward Hall and Florence Kluckhohn and Fred L. Strodtbeck in the 1950s." (Gould et al, Think). Dimensions of culture can be reckoned as "categories that organize cultural data." (Hoft, 1996).Several anthropological studies have ventured in the arena of researching the various aspects of cultural dimensions. One of these landmark studies, compiled by Geert Hofstede, has served the purpose of providing foundation for a lot of other research efforts.Hofstede took up this study in the 1970s and 80s and it involved a huge survey at IBM that "dealt mainly with the employees' personal values related to work situation" This study encompassed 72 national subsidiaries of IBM, 38 occupations/trades, 20 languages, and an impressive 116,000 people. (Hofstede, 1991).Analyzing the data obtained from this survey Hofstede gave a five fold classification of cultural dimensions. Other researchers extended the analysis of cultural dimensions by several notches. For instance, Hoft while describing cultural dimensions presents a useful categorization of cultural dimensions in two classes viz. objective and subjective. Objective categories are those that are "easy-to research cultural differences like political and economic contexts, text directions in writing systems, and differences in the way that you format the time of day, dates, and numbers." Subjective categories, on the other hand describe dimensional information "like value systems, behavioral systems, and intellectual systems"(Hoft,1996). Impact of Internet on Culture Previous research on mere exposure has demonstrated that exposure to information alone can make a big difference in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior (Zajonc, 1974). Conversely, as inoculation research has suggested, individuals living in a "germ-free" environment are more likely to be affected by a non-orthodox message when facing such a situation (McGuire, 1964). It can be very clearly seen that Internet usage has impacted both the objective as well as subjective categories of cultural dimensions. Take for instance the objective dimension of political contexts. Now opinion polls on elections and leaders are help within hours bringing about consensus on ideal candidates and the issues that they stand for. There are web casts of debates. Information about political systems reaches swiftly in making it possible to transform votes from one category to another. Similarly one can take the economic context -again all information is available over the Internet with maximum updation possible. People are shopping, managing finances and even deriving their incomes from internet activities. People are even learning transnational writing systems and date formats over the Internet and without moving an inch out of their homes. In subjective dimensions the impact of the Internet has been tremendous to say the least. Consider the behavioral aspect or dimension of our culture. A lone some person who is a social recluse is merrily making friends over Internet chatting his heart out and laying bare his/her most pressing personal problems. While this person's social and physical bond has weakened over time his/her virtual social bond has strengthened by a multiple factor over time. Another subjective dimension viz behavioral dimension has been vastly affected too. Ability to have a variety of interfaces over the Internet which include dealing with various organizations, filing tax returns, accessing libraries, reading newspapers, playing lotteries, playing poker, betting on casions,dating, chatting, banking online, shopping online etc have ensured one major behavioral change. While in all such transactions, prior to their development and accessibility over the Internet, carefully planning was needed to visit their brick & mortar equivalents which were followed by actual physical move from the houses through the city commuter systems involving actual interface with live persons .Now this repeated interactions with live persons has been truncated to bare minimum. This is bringing about a faceless socialization where in one is now able to obtain services of people without having to exert physically in face o face interactions. This has its pros and cons. A big benefit could be that the energy saved could be deployed in quality social interactions with chosen few resulting in maximization of social utility.However, if this quality interaction does not take place then there is an equivalent fear of this major dependence on Internet threatening to turn vast groups of our populations into social recluses. Both outcomes would have tremendous impact on our personal as well as social behavioral patterns. Similarly intellectual systems have been vastly affected by Internet. Internet can now satisfy almost an unlimited hunger for knowledge. Electronic books, magazines, newspapers, tutorials, skills, university degrees etc are available on line. Similarly there are websites which are devoted to art and culture, literature, sports, science, general knowledge, various other subjects such as management, finance, economics etc.A knowledge seeker can not only retrieve unlimited amount of information at the click of mouse bur also quickly masticate such information to produce knowledge based outputs which, in turn, can be made available to other over the Internet in no time, possibly for similar uses. Thus our intellectual systems have broadened, become more usable and participative with rapid dissemination of prepared information. What is amazing is that while specific portion of this global knowledge pool is now priced (reasonably though) ;a substantial portion of it continues to be entirely free. What has been described as various interfaces developed and made accessible over the Internet are now termed as informational contribution of the modern day technology to a global concept properly known as globalization. While globalization has strict economic connotations the role of information technology in strengthening globalization is acknowledged far and wide. The effects of globalization, then, in part the effects of revolution in information technology. Internet forms the major technological advance of the last two and half decades. Devetak and Higgott explain how globalization has brought about a weakening of an intra national social bond. They further posit that ongoing process of globalization causes constant disruption in existing social bond. It is their view that "under conditions of globalization, assumptions made about the social bond are changing; .... the article concludes that the prospects for a satisfactory synthesis of a liberal economic theory of globalization, a normative political theory of the global public domain, and a new social bond are remote"(Devetak & Higgott,1999). It has been already exhibited how the Internet is unfastening the local or national bonds and strengthening the new virtual bonds. Apart from anthropological and sociological definitions of the term culture one can have the concept of popular culture also to explain the phenomenon of Internet and its impact on our culture. The term 'popular culture' could be used generally to describe productions that appeal to the masses and is intended for mass consumption. That is, popular culture refers to wave of followers in a particular time slice in our histories where either a single production item or a single concept or a combination of the two or better still a combination of a few of them have created such a frenzied and accepted appeal that there grows an influential usage pattern of such concepts/products which includes altered values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour patterns which all now rally or centre around such concepts/products. However, many critiques have continuously debated upon the intentions of such mass cultures, or popular cultures. Whether these are lasting or not, for instance, is a major controversy. For example, one of Frankfurt school's leaders, Theodore Adorno considered popular culture as being "standardized items that provided an illusion of novelty, based on superficial details", and that the masses accept popular culture so easily because of their inability to "comprehend more complex forms of culture." (Crane, D. 1992, p.2) In another book, author says that "the masses are not primary but secondary; they are an object of calculation, an appendage of the machinery." (Strinati, D. 1995 p.62), this means that the primary objective of the end 'products' produced by the 'machinery' is to make profit, and not to benefit the masses, who only enters the scenario with fuller participation only after they have been used as targets in the market that is, much after the fact that the interested producers' lobbies or cartels arrive at a conclusion that their primary objective has been fulfilled or is well beyond the 'take off' stage. Author also believes that the masses are, thus, made to 'serve' the machinery, absorbing the products automatically when there are no obvious negative effects. Another theorist was Bennett, who believed that popular culture is not fed inconspicuously to the public for monetary profit, but instead, is molded around what the masses actually like and want, and therefore basically luring them into accepting what is given to them as it is the very thing that they want, but in a way that the powerful consents and are tempted towards hegemonic ideological formations. This in turn, gives the providers of the products effective control of how they would like to provide the masses with what they enjoy doing, yet at the same time giving them control over what it is. For example, in chapter seven of his book (Bennett, T. 1986, p.135-141), discusses the implications of Blackpool and the holiday resort built there and the popular culture that had sprung up surrounding this holiday resort as early as in the nineteenth century. This case gives us an insight into the exact processes through which popular cultures develop. Blackpool began as a respectable middle-upper class holiday resort, but gradually became a popular destination for the working class as excursion trains started to deliver trainloads of day-trip visitors. It may be remembered that this facility was originally developed as a 'rational' way of educating the working class of the more 'moral' ways of Blackpool. To cater for these people, insightful businessmen and performers began to set up their stalls and shows there, serving them cheap food and entertainment, including freak shows. When this became too much to tolerate for the middle and upper classes, they attempted to bring to an end to the excursion trains, but were unsuccessful. They then decided that, instead of letting the masses roam the place freely, interfering with the middle and upper classes, they would allow them a relatively confined and controlled environment where they would be allowed to do as they please. This environment was the Central Pier, or 'the People's Pier'. The powerful "extended its licensing and policing authority to include the piers" (p.139) so they would be under their control. Eventually, as Blackpool was overwhelmed by the incoming masses of the working class, the middle class moved away from Blackpool and preferred to visit other places instead. Soon, the powerful realised the full potential of giving the working class what they want, yet doing it in a way to "hookwith hegemonic ideological formations." (p.141) Before the computers and the Internet made their way into our everyday lives and homes, entertainment was commonly found outside of the home. Going to theatres, watching films, going dancing with friends, having a stroll along the beach were the norm among both teenagers and adults.However, our society has changed dramatically over the past two decades, and especially in the last, when the Internet, a "global network of interconnected computers" (Gauntlett, D, et al 2004: p.5), made its way into our homes, through the use of computer. This change has seemingly happened so rapidly that the changes could be classed as nothing short of dramatic changes. History has sufficient evidence to prove that technological breakthroughs used to advance much more gradually and in differentiated stages in earlier days. Initially such technological breakthroughs used to be put to a full scale developmental stage by researchers outside official scientific circles. This was the stage when idea was brought from the seed to embryonic state. Then the developed and embryonic idea, having obtained developmental possibilities, used to enter laboratories for structured incubation stages. Incubation process ensured that the idea was developed into a complete utility product or service. Subsequently this product or service used to undergo a stage of pilot marketing and advertising. Only after these stages the product or the service used to full-scale commercialization with further developments and variants coming still later. For example, information was spread widely using books for many centuries, then newspapers were developed over another few hundred years. Films dominated for a few decades before the radio became popular, and then the television and successively the Internet (Johnson, S. 1997: p.3). The last of which viz.Internet developed over such a short time spanning so much less than the centuries which were required for the evolution from the book. In fact it was the idea of Internet which took its own time in arriving. Thereafter the spread and development of the Internet was a process which was largely uncontrolled, determined only by the developments in technology on which Internet ran and resided. In fact as communications and networking improved accompanied by cheapening of high speed computers, the Internet spread like wild fire. As the numbers of the Internet users are always changing dynamically and in a secular increasing direction, estimating the number of Internet users turns a difficult task. However, according to Nua Internet Surveys, whose quotes and statistics are frequently used by the United States Department of Commerce, there were about 605.60 million people 'online' worldwide in September 2002 (Nua Internet How Many Online, http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/). This was about 9.97% of the world's population. In December 1995, the same figure had stood at a mere16 million and the present estimate showed a whopping rise of 589.60 million since then. When something becomes so immensely popular around the world, changes in social behaviour could be expected (as is explained above), with so many people now being connected through using the same technology and being aware of the fact of such commonality in sharing. Accessing the Internet has become a popular culture itself, while the information it helps to spread around the world also helps spread other popular cultures at the same time. The origins of the Internet lay in the United States government's interest in developing a network that could survive a nuclear attack (Gauntlett, D. et al, 2004: 5). However, over time, this way of networking computers slowly got adopted in the academic and scientific fields as a resource to aid research, and from these precincts it then eventually flew to the general public and masses, where it is now used for anything from communications to research, to entertainment and work and much more, as has been elaborated above. Many companies even exist only online, having no formal 'office space' in the more conventional ways of making a business. Although it is difficult to pinpoint when the Internet began to create expectations among all new adherents to t the popular culture associated with it however two snapshots taken from the past couple of years are informative. These snap shots relate to one of the most dynamic and pioneering adherents to the popular culture associated with the Internet viz that of US residents. Pew Internet Project researchers found during a study of community technology initiatives in Cleveland in late 2000 that some low income people who came to the community center to pick up Internet skills were substantially influenced by aggressive marketing campaigns by major Internet service providers. However, these fresh users of the Internet had a very thin knowledge base. They were, instead, more curious to know more about the CD-ROMs which they regularly received in their mail as informative or publicity materials. Only then they had questions about as to what the Internet was all about. Fast forward two years later to another snapshot wherein at a community technology center in Virginia, Pew Internet researchers found that now new Internet users had upgraded conceptually substantially. They were now swift to adopt, understand and use Internet related advanced applications such as filling medicine prescriptions online. The reasons fro this change over a short period of two years can be many. Among them, one can list a larger Internet population or the numerous informational promotion of the Internet on TV and in the newspapers or even the easy availability of cheap and powerful computers or even highly improved communication channels. Moot point was that new users now went online as a matter of fact with much higher understanding of what informational and other needs Internet could satisfy. Also the number of experienced users of Internet has been on the rise the world over. In the US, at the end of 1999-about the time the first articles began to appear worrying about "Internet hype"-only about one-third of Internet users had been online for three years or more. In September 2002, for the first time, two-thirds (68%) of Internet users said they have been online for three or more years; nearly two in five (38%) say they have been online six years or more. With growing online experience comes greater skill at finding things online. And notwithstanding the dot-com shakeout, the passage of time has meant more useful content becoming available on the Web. The upshot is more information online and more experienced users searching for it with greater ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. The result is high expectations about what is online. A final piece of the picture is the growth of Web sites that help deliver on expectations and that have become, for many Internet users, trusted online sources and tools. "Google" was a word that would have elicited, at best, a raised eyebrow among Americans a few years ago. Today, the popular search engine is, according to comScore Media Metrix, the fourth rated Internet property (in terms of unique visitors). "Google" is a verb commonly used among the Internet cognoscenti in referring to online searches. Upstart sites such as eBay, Amazon, iVillage, Classmates.com, and Travelocity serve the needs of numerous Internet users and are among comScore's top 20 sites. More established companies, such as AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Walt Disney, and the New York Times have popular Web sites that serve a range of users' informational and transactional needs (Horrigan &Rainie, 2002). The Internet ,thus, could be seen to be a derivative or folk culture, as many websites are heard of through word-of-mouth, people appreciating positive aspects of a website an the culture to frequent such website preponders. Yet Internet popularity is also the result of new technologies, as Internet is based on the platform that is supplied by such new technologies, comprising of communication backbone and servers located across the globe. The Internet could be also be reckoned as a popular culture that is here to dominate the masses for the profit-making by the companies that use and control Internet resources to the maximum by bringing in appealing and packaged products. However, this is an not the precise manner to describe the Internet as a popular culture, if one considers that the profit-making companies resorted to Internet usage much after the Internet became a popular medium. However such companies and there powerful adherents and supporters made the Internet all the more popular and useful. This made way for the masses to flock all the more to the Internet following such powerful interests.Comapnies promptly came alive with their web marketing strategies and CRM modules. These companies are now variedly 'live' on the World Wide Web, and offer an easy to use interface to such masses who ,without much technical know how ,can use such interfaces extensively. This goes to confirm the fact that Internet has been developed as a potent tool for domination of masses and is quite actively used to spread and entrench hegemonic ideologies. Above discussions reveals that the fascination with the Internet and the world that exists within the World Wide Web could be seen to be similar to the one that the masses had with freak shows in Blackpool in the 1850s (Bennett, T. 1986: p.136). Freak shows were widely popular in America too in the early nineteenth century. In Smit's contribution to Gauntlett and Horsley's book, he explains that both fascination with freak shows and Internet browsing depended on the "consumer's fascination with difference, or the 'other', and both were (or are) driven by commercial gain and commercial persuasion" (Gauntlett, D. 2004: 158). Author also explains as to how, with the emergence of political correctness (in America, as this book is written around and about American culture), the masses instead began to spend time watching films, then television, and then now browsing the Internet on their computers. The World Wide Web afforded more freedom in that it could be viewed at any time of the day and in the privacy of anyone's own home, unlike freak shows, where people disclosed openly their love for the 'weird' in public. Because the Internet has links to almost anything, including cyber-freak shows and pornography, people can now indulge in their fantasies in any area they desire and without the scrutiny of others who might have objected to it. The availability of electronic media such as digital photography, videos, digital sound and the emergence of web cams have boosted a new type of contemporary fascination, in that these additional technological developments form a complementary ensemble to Internet and make possible much richer and interactive content over the Internet. Thus one can now have almost real life freak shows or pornographic depiction on the Internet with the help of such complementary devices. Thus the technology has manipulated the "space between the art object and the audience, bringing the 'other' 'closer' to the spectator" (Gauntlett, D. 2004: p.160), taking people seated ensconced comfortably in their studies and locked rooms, decreasing the human to human in flesh interaction and minimising outings such as visits to the circuses or sideshows. Now, social interaction is achieved through the wires, through chat rooms and software, and could happen with people anywhere in the world in real time. Thus the Internet could be seen as a tool to help and perpetuate hegemonic control, as the powerful and opportunists find the World Wide Web to be a valuable medium and market which could be used to further their profit linked interest. As they can virtually address the global markets through Internet such a medium has received maximum attention in the recent past. Thus such commercial lobbies could sell their products online, they could lure masses by using celebrities to endorse their products and advertise them using contextual and eye catching online banners and text ads. This much amount of packaging could even make useless gadgets as desirable objects of purchase. Thus profit maximization is perpetuated at the cost of any social and responsible mass marketing to help the cause of lower income strata. More time is spent promoting luxury goods and services, for instance, selling high priced fashion industry outputs. Any entertainment or fashion website would provide a direct evidence of this trend. However research ahs established that any media of communication should be credible and desist from misleading audience. Media credibility refers to the perceived believability of media content "beyond any proof of its contentions" (West, 1994, p. 159). Drawing on the classic persuasion research on source credibility (Hovland & Weiss, 1951), media credibility research has shifted the focus from characteristics of information sources, such as competence, expertise, honesty, and likable personality, to characteristics of media behaviors such as objectivity, accuracy, fairness, and lack of bias (Gaziano & McGrath, 1986). Internet is right now the largest media and it should aspire to become credible media. Conclusion While Internet leap frogged from development stage to a highly developed commercial stage with a short span of time, assisted ably by rapid developments in communications and associated technologies, it has largely failed to serve serious social purpose. While Internet has grown into an immensely popular culture propagated by commercial and powerful interest; it has also made deep inroads in our anthropologically and sociologically understood concepts of culture. Several of these changes have been for the good while a few have tended to subdue social interaction and encourage virtual recluses. Biggest contribution of the Internet in our cultural transformation is in respect of information and communication. Now the entire globe is one on these two counts. Using Internet one can communicate with any part of the world and obtain information about anything in the world that has been posted on the net. Thus it is a considered view that while a major personification of Internet is that of a popular culture where in commercial interests vie for control of masses to target them as potential markets for their products; a lot of social good can be achieved through the Internet if it is made a molded and nurtured instrument of cultural change. References Tylor, Sir Edward Burnett.(1871). Primitive Culture. Boston. In Kluckhohn, Clyde, A. L. Kroeber, Alfred G. Meyer, Wayne Untereiner (1952), Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA. Wissler, C. (1920).Opportunities for Coordination in Anthropological and Psychological Research. American Anthropologist, 22, pp. 1-12. In Kluckhohn, Clyde, A. L. Kroeber, Alfred G. Meyer, Wayne Untereiner (1952), Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA. p 81. Snow, C. P. (1959).The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.Cambridge University Press. 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