Internet effects on “Global-Cultural”

Column by REHMANI ASHFAQ

mediamanfrompk@gmail.com

Dear readers, The Internet is the network of computers all around the world, which store and exchange information. Internet effect culture completely in variety of different ways, these could divide by positive and negative effect on culture in totally. People have different ideas as for the topic; some people believe that the internet brought so many negatives for us. However, I will attempt to demonstrate that the positive effect of internet on education, economic and communication in the essay. The Internet is the answer to the search for a global connectivity medium. Because of the Internet, the world has shrunk, cultures have evolved, changed, and now currently we are in the midst of a global upheaval.

Nowadays internet have been effected many areas of our ways of life, work and the culture very much. Primarily, I need to define the culture, culture refers to the Culture consists of model, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment's in artifacts. (Hofestede, 1997) According to Brown, A (1995)and Schein, E (1994), a simple of way defining culture is shared meaning and behavior rules, that’s basic means that the culture need to communication or shared and behavior rules in the groups. Dear friends, this Column will evaluate how the internet has impacted culture.

It is clear that internet have many benefits effect on culture. Education is a particularly way in which achievement of culture has occurred, recently, People can learn about anything using the internet. For example there are many organizations and companies set up the training class online, such as the business skill, accounting, art and some else like these are slowly popular in common, and also there are some school adopt the distance education, in result of that students needn't to go to school. The above evidence illustrates that the internet improving the education advancement and people can be easy get a lots of information and also study knowledge by themselves online.

According to Nazr Hussain a senior Editor at Weekly English News paper “Business News” Yea, the internet has affected our culture. Now, we have become computer savvy and are regarded as netizens. Even ten years back, we used to post letters by air mail and wait for the answer to come. Now, by a click the email reaches the computer of the recipient and the vice verse. We used to go to cinema hall to enjoy a popular movie and now we enjoy our preferred movie sitting on the home sofa. The young genre chats with their closed ones with their favorite songs putting honey into ears. Now, we enjoy the live telecast of President's speech or any realty show by surfing net. In this way, the whole atmosphere has changed affecting our culture.

According to, talented TV Artist Ali Shan The relationship between Internet and culture is an important one. The internet is fast becoming our number 1 method of communication. The effects of internet on culture, as a result, the internet is the often the most common way we end up being directly exposed to other cultures. This ‘mass’ ‘sharing of cultures' has an influence on all of us, and is responsible for Breaking down boundaries and creating a sense of 'global culture'. On the internet, someone from a remote village in USA can easily meet, chat, and share opinions with someone from Pakistan even Israel. This means we are able to influence and be influenced by many different cultures, simply by clicking on a mouse or typing on a keyboard.
Through this column I do like to share something about “Internet technology and global culture” with you.

I think, This might not sound like such a big deal if you were born after 1980 - but if you take into consideration the way the world was only a few hundred years ago, you'll see that actually this has a pretty big impact on culture. A few hundred years ago, people would have to sail on a boat for weeks to get to far-off lands where they could meet and interact with other cultures.
Explorers like Christopher Columbus would come back from their journeys with amazing tales and of the way other people live, what they eat, what their houses are like, and a million other details.

Nowadays, we don't need to travel on a boat for weeks on end so that we can meet people of other cultures and share our experiences: We simply add them to our face book, blog, linkden follow them on Twitter or chat with them over Skype. Because it is so easy to communicate, people of different cultures have become a lot more aware and understanding of each other - and cultures that might previously have seemed strange and alien now seem a lot more common and palatable. In my opinion, the internet is pushing us towards a future where the different cultures of the world blend into one big colorful mix - where we all have local identity, but can identify with an overall web-culture he add.

Today in many developing countries insufficient progress in science and technology is considered to be the chief reason for general backwardness; on the contrary, many in the industrially advanced societies hold unfettered technological progress as the roots of all social ills.

Is it really possible that all social and political upheavals of the past decades are the byproduct of thoughtless advance in technology? Does it make sense to think of technology as an ‘inhumane force’ that has somehow managed to throw ‘human relations’ into disorder and chaos.

Are we faced with a kind of technological determinism that places man and society in a particular direction with no discernible horizon? Or is it after all possible that technology is independent, neutral and free of any values, whose benefits and faults are chiefly by the use to which it is put by man? Is it possible for traditional societies to import technology and then try to weave it into their own cultural fabric? Does technology cause alienation? Or is it, as an Iranian thinker has put it, a necessary evil equally harmful in presence as in absence?

Finally, how are we equipped, the people of the Third World, to cope with the great power that technology is? And of course a host of other questions that are fashioned ever anew with respect to technology.

The friction between technological development and the preservation of cultural values, in particular and the influence of the former upon the course of social and cultural changes have been a great source of controversy, the consideration of which is obviously beyond this assignment. Our main objective here is to discuss the cultural aspect of technology and the effect it has had on the cultural identity of the Third World.

Today, human life is an industrial life. In this life which is governed by technical relations, all products are interrelated and interdependent, where the purchase of a product commits one to the purchase of another. Technology advances constantly and rapidly; what has been useful and favored one day runs out of style next day.

The Evolutionists introduced technology as the major component of culture and put the other components at second place holding that all the components of culture are affected by technology. In this regard Leslie White has introduced the most important theory on technological determinism. According to him not only technology determines the direction of cultural development, but it also determines the need for building social foundation.¹ In fact technological determinism assumes that technological innovation is the driving force behind social change imposing its own logic on the social actors and their relations.

Parsons believed that technology is a kind of capability on the part of the organization for a more effective control and necessary change in the physical environment in favor of human needs and demands.

I think, Science and technology carry the genetic codes of communities where they have been produced” Therefore technology is a product of the Western industrialized communities which owe their present position to the attempt made by their ancestors within certain traditional culture patterns. The industrial communities have been organized on the basis of rational management and advancement of science and technology. Therefore any discussion concerning development ultimately leads to the question of science and technology and any discussion concerning these two leads to the question of development. Unfortunately, the sociological dimensions of development, specially the link between culture and development and technology, and technology and culture have not been properly considered. This negligence has led to the conclusion that development is merely synonymous to economic change. Whereas development is in fact a complicated and multi-dimensional process which includes social, political and cultural spheres.

In order to bring about deep economic and social changes and promotion of the living standard as well as filling the gap between themselves and the developed countries, the developing countries are in need of science and technology, and development has become an important factor for industrial and economic progress. But science and technology have not been created and developed in isolation and introduction of any new technology is a cultural phenomenon, directly affecting the cultural values and the behavior of communities.

Besides, technology is not by itself the basis of progress and development though today the communities which consume more and exhaust nature are considered more advanced and more humanistic. In the public mind, too, development is a synonym for the culture, social and economic, of the developed countries, the owners of technology.

But development by itself is a historical change that is, the communities move and transit from one historical stage to another. In fact preparing the community for development is a historical necessity, depending on time and place. The pattern of development policy-making in each country is peculiar to that country, but the laws of development are general and comprehensive. Therefore the transfer of technology can be effective in the progress and development of orient communities only when they are in harmony with the social and cultural conditions of such communities.

So, claiming that with mere transfer of technology the Third World will easily develop is an optimistic idea. Since the transfer of technology is a question of establishing a rational balance between world culture and national or endogenous culture. Cultural development is the process of self-sufficiency which, at a macro level, is fulfilled by the community itself and, at a micro level, by the individuals and groups. On this same basis it is directly the result of endogenous cultural creativity against prevalent methods of the transfer of science and technology.

Development is the seed which should be sown in the soil of a country, and should grow there. It is not a sapling which may be brought from one place and transplanted in another place. However, external communication, especially technological devices, will have influence in the growth of this seed.

Safeguarding the cultural authenticity and identity does not mean to go away from the current of technology and/or return to the past and to experience what was already experienced by others, rather it is to go away from the atmosphere of slogans, to harmonize ourselves, and accept the realities of the present world. Protection of cultural identity and reinforcing it are of vital importance. Similarly, technology constitutes the reality of time. Our goal must be to protect our cultural identity by using the gifts of technology and not sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter or ignore the benefits of technology.