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DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

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DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

The aim of this article is to understand the cultural changes brought about by
the rapid diffusion of the new communications technology in the globalized
context of the West. The main slant is from a cultural anthropological point of
view, but it is inevitably also interdisciplinary due to the common ground
shared with philosophy, psychology and sociology. The analysis intends to make
some proposals on how to think about future, and how to intervene consciously
in the current situation so that it keeps pace with the young, the so-called
‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001). In order to do this, I begin by tracing a brief
outline of the reasons why the discipline of cultural anthropology plays such an
important role in the understanding of the digital revolution which today is a
part of our everyday life. The new information technologies and their global
diffusion have radically influenced the changes in Western society and locally.
The current process of globalization has favoured and has been strengthened by
the Internet which has evolved with unprecedented rapidity.

Cultural differences between groups of human beings have always been at the
very core of cultural and social anthropology since it became an academic
discipline: as Hunnerz (2010) says “diversity is our business”. Initially the
discipline was concerned with the study of non-Western, so called ‘primitive’
cultures, which today also have an impact on our own society. Anthropology is
characterized by multiple, interconnected fields of study which make up the
‘culture’ of a group of human beings. This anthropological concept helps us
understand what we are talking about and consists of a wide range of different
realms of knowledge elaborated by all populations, and their resulting actions
and behaviours. Such spheres of knowledge are organized into a cognitive
structure whose content varies from group to group.

These realms of knowing are considered useful by a society to tackle everyday

life, extraordinary events, and problems that give meaning to the world around
them. This cultural model is learnt at birth, more or less unconsciously; people
make it their own by imitation and example and it is expressed in the local
language. This is not a once-and-for-all procedure but a flexible one, subject to
continuous change, a life-long learning process influenced by personal
experience. Culture is, therefore, essential for creating a sense of belonging and
identity for every human being.

Every cultural model finds its own answers to internal impulses that occur over
a period of time, but above all to those produced by encounters with other
cultures. The modifications, theoretical or practical, which emerge from the
diversity of the fields of knowledge that characterize different societies can be
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influential to a greater or lesser degree. This is a case in point for changes

arising from the introduction of advanced technologies, whether these are felt
consciously or unconsciously in our Western culture and in other cultures.
When a human group comes into contact with new elements it arranges them
inside an already existing pattern, thus modifying the order of what is already
known. The introduction of new technologies, for example, has led to changes
which required readjustment, or new articulations, of relations between the
various fields of knowledge and the daily life of both the individual and the
community. Technical revolutions have also turned out to be cultural
revolutions, as witnessed by the changes wrought by inventions such as the
wheel, the steam engine etc., and also by the passage from an oral culture to a
written one.

Human sciences has the instruments to break down social changes and to

comprehend the present procedure of globalization and the impacts made by data

innovation on various social orders.

The job of innovation in a general public shows the insolubility of the connections

that dilemma innovation, society and the person as appeared by this examination

which recognizes the various social changes brought about by the utilization of

data innovation (IT). Innovation isn't just the machine itself however is the entire

arrangement of connections between individuals, utensils and fields of learning.

Another significant element of anthropological hypothesis is that it empowers us

to characterize culture as a lot of open acts. Correspondence is the thing that

enables gatherings and people to speak to themselves and collaborate with the

world through standards and qualities.

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Throughout recent years the broad communications have in guaging a fate of

homogenization, a leveling-out or even vanishing of social contrasts. Field

research and ethnography did everywhere throughout the world by

anthropologists have kept up the opposite for a considerable length of time and

this has been affirmed by ebb and flow patterns. For instance, the steady rising

interest to have possess social and phonetic highlights recognized inside Nations,

for example, the Scots in Great Britain, the Catalans in Spain, and so on.

One last broad perception: new innovations adjust space, time, connections and

kinds of correspondence that still keep on exist together with different fields of

information inalienable in a culture. The diverse pace of improvement of various

social orders on the planet has been overpowered by this development, which has

gotten everybody uninformed. The more prominent our familiarity with living in

a worldwide world, the more strenuous our resistance of nearby character is.

There is a hole between the speed at which advanced innovation is creating and

the moderate pace at which social models and their inborn qualities are evolving.

For instance, existence are seen in various ways on the net and, all things

considered, in spite of the fact that the view of the web is gradually impacting the

observation, all things considered.

This push for social change incredibly animated by the web, is available in all

social orders associated with this innovative experience. Along these lines,
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human studies doesn't just look to see how one figures out how to turn into an

individual from a general public, yet it additionally tries to see how choice

exercises and human innovativeness change the way toward learning so as to

open the psyche and become more acquainted with and figure out how to regard

the world perspective on others.

The accompanying investigation is separated into the three times of our general

public's time continuum past, present and future. To give youthful residents the

vital subjective capacities to deal with their future with more prominent

mindfulness, it is basic to modify already held conclusions and, with the

advantage of knowing the past, to respond to questions that had no answers from

the second 50% of the 1900s to the principal decade of the twenty-first century,

re-breaking down the social changes that have happened from that point forward.

The past that I am in this manner inspired by is the ongoing past. A considerable

lot of us can scarcely recollect regularly having lived without email, PCs, advanced

cells, every one of those mechanical gadgets that today appear to be essential.

The imaginative element of the web is its utilization as an instrument of

correspondence among people which guarantees that the network can instruct its

individuals what they need to know. Lévy finishes up and keeps up that the

development of an individual knowledge, product of individual exertion and the

vital time to learn it, is inescapable. It isn't hard to see even today that the picture
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of the web is disorganized. The setting up of netiquette marks a first activity to

control the absence of order on the Internet. Netiquette is the manual for the

Internet, which presents standards that oversee issues of legitimateness and great

conduct on the web.

This short talk of Lévy's six inquiries and his future proposition concerning the

adjustments in the way of life just in part mirrors the examination occurring at

the time yet is unquestionably edifying for now. Plainly social models in the

Western world have experienced extraordinary changes. Each general public

explains codes of correspondence that are viewed as fundamental for the

transmission of learning and relational and intercultural experiences—simply

consider oral, composed, nonverbal and visual correspondence. Correspondence

is a sort of impression of society; in reality each language figures out how to

express all the way of life formulated by a gathering of individuals. Today like

never before, these innovative changes must make us mindful of the significance

of existing social decent variety in the specific situation, its extravagance and the

history that connections various nations. It is simpler to concentrate on what

people and societies share for all intents and purpose instead of manage the

multifaceted nature of their disparities.

Albeit new advancements seem to support closeness among people, in certainty

the contrary impact is valid and significantly more misleading. This is the reason
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it is so critical to know about the way that the distinctions in the substance of

learning and the activities springing from it, exist past the common utilization of

the correspondence codes utilized on the web. This is on the grounds that behind

the product and the equipment there are people who choose what a program

ought to or ought not do. Their decisions are guided by their own advantages and

points, and their very own social and passionate encounters. This implies surfing

the web is definitely not an impartial or target understanding, yet is the aftereffect

of choices made by somebody who realizes how to abuse the desires for the

occasion, who intends to get some monetary benefit from this movement and who

keeps up control of the data.

In this manner computerized innovation doesn't kill the unavoidable

procurement of a social model which gives you the view of having a place with a

general public or a genuine network. It goes with the last mentioned and adjusts

it by changing learning, relational connections and conduct which obviously

associate youngsters today. Advanced innovations are comparative round the

world however luckily experience a broadened intellectual world in the various

regions. The nearby culture gets the new advances, re-works them to make them

adequate to the current culture in that network and sends them back to the

worldwide level in a nonstop trade of intercultural impacts and in consistent

change. Similar to the wearing of pants: everyone, 'crude individuals' and rich

Westerners the same, wear them, yet the individual wearing them communicates
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values, ideas, morals, standards, strict convictions and pictures gained from his

own gathering which contrast significantly from every single other gathering.

The section proceeds with the talk of social changes that have jumped out at date

since certain classifications today have gotten increasingly apparent or have

transformed: they are affecting individuals' view of the world animated by the

utilization of the web and the Internet. Classifications including progressively

close to home mentalities to a 'computerized local' will be managed in the last

part concerning proposition for what's to come.

The general attributes of basic social change is having the option to accomplish

things that were unrealistic previously: the moment course of data; the

continuous 24-h interface with individuals or programming everywhere

throughout the world; the individual introduction of yourself and your very own

inventiveness and creative mind; the wrecking of genuine fringes; the

transnational idea of the dissemination of thoughts and instruments ever littler,

all the more dominant and lighter workstations, advanced mobile phones, IPods,

IPads, tablets, wearable innovation and so forth.— no longer just 'numerous to

many' correspondence yet in addition 'consistently on'. Today correspondence by

means of the PC happens continuously, is complementary, intuitive and

relentless.
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