This week we addressed the topic of ‘cosmopolitanism’ through the lens of cyberspace. I will again begin this post with a quote from the lecture slides.

“… to make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and moderns; between a bloodless ethic of profit and a bloody ethic of identity; between “us” and “them.”’  (Appiah, 2006, p. 97)

This quote is referring to the changing boundaries between traditionally separate social groups. It reflects on the idea that all people belong to a single global community. Appiah also notes in his book ‘Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers’ that a community could form (following the ideology of cosmopolitanism) in which members from varying locations form relationships based upon mutual respect despite any potential differences.

The connection to cyberspace?

In my mind, the connection between Appiah’s writings and that of the internet are clear. While it doesn’t neatly fit into the cosmopolitan idea of an end of nation states, it does offer the platform necessary for Appiah’s suggestion of a collective based upon mutual respect despite their points of origin. In my post ‘Week 3: Youth, Virtual Identities, Online gaming, Cyborgs and Avatars’ from this portfolio, I briefly discuss the video game Second Life. This game and others like it are an excellent example of communities forming from radically different backgrounds. In their journal article Ikegami (2011) described their encounter from across the globe. Logging on from Japan, Ikegami visited the home of a Texan – two places separated by thousands of miles in reality.

This distinction between a social and political vision of cosmopolitanism is clear in two other quotes from the lecture slides.

Political cosmopolitanism: Supra-national governance, the lessening power of the nation and the increasing power of supra-national power. E.g. The United Nations. The world as one nation, world citizenship. (e.g Kant, 1795, Habermas, 1996)

Socio-cultural cosmopolitanism: A global awareness. Openness towards diversity and multi-culturalism. Life-style. Travelling.”A willingness to engage with the Other” (Hannerz, 1990; Rantanen, 2005)

These quotes underline the differences in approaches that certain cosmopolitan writers describe this concept, although it is important to note that they are not necessarily exclusive ideas. The political cosmopolitanism is at the core of this ideology, and works towards ideas of greater inter-national governmental, regulatory and cultural bodies. The connection to the internet, I would argue, mainly lies in the social-cultural cosmopolitanism. While individuals using platforms such as Second Life do not physically travel, they do travel a trans-national boundary in their interactions with those from other places. This is clear in the example given by Ikegami, who through the internet, connected with an individual across the globe.

Technological determinism.

The second section of this week’s lecture was on ‘technological determinism’. This relates to the impact that technology has upon society as a whole, and argues that large swathes of decisions and actions taken are aligned with this technology. Marx argued that productive technology was the primary driver of changes in human relationships and structure. Industrialisation saw the mass movement of peoples into towns and cities, in order to work factories. This development of technology therefore, inherently, determined the lives of thousands of people. While it’s true that like most decisions in life are compulsory, the advent of this means of production – and therefore a wage – was difficult to resist. Essentially, in situations of great change like the industrial era we do still retain our free will – but the benefits as brought about this change hold too many positives to reject.

While these industrial forms of technology are not directly comparable to those involved in cyberspace, they offer a building block for our understanding of this phenomenon.

However technological determinism is not without its criticisms. A primary critique comes from Mackenzie (1998, p. 24) who argue that the development of technology is shaped by the social influence of culture. This culture can take the form of governmental regulation (and other forms of politics), economic consideration (market viability) and the clear social dimension (products, online and physical, that are desired).

“What matters is not the technology itself, but the social or economic system in which it is embedded” (Winner, L., 1977).

References:

Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in a World of Strangers. London: Penguin Books

Ikegami, E. (2011). Visualizing the Networked Self: Agency, Reflexivity, and the Social Life of Avatars. Social Research,78(4), 1155-1184. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23349847

MacKenzie, D. (1998). Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change. Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 24. 

Winner, L. (1977). Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press.