Themed Section: on the Edge

The articles collected here were chosen from papers presented at the second biannual conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication, held in Perth, Australia, 13–16 July 2000. Collectively, the articles explore the social, political and cultural contexts that inhibit and/or encourage the appropriation of IT among cultural groups very much at the edges of Western cultural influence and communication infrastructures. The articles on black African students (Louise Postma) and Filopino virtual communities (Peter Sy) provide detailed insight into cultural groups that have only rarely entered the literature and consideration of Western IT theorists and researchers. The article on the Kelabit community (Harris et al.) similarly illuminates a cultural group that, to our knowledge, has yet to be taken up in IT literatures. By taking us to the edges of Western/ Northern/industrialized world perspectives, these articles help us discern that no matter how far we may pretend that our viewpoints are universal – especially in the name of globalization and the diffusion of democracy in the ‘electronic global village’ – they are, in fact, neither global nor universal. Rather, our viewpoints are limited and, at best, stand alongside the distinctive worldviews of ‘other’ cultures. As Ess (2001) has argued elsewhere, if IT is to be implemented in ways that will prevent its spread around the globe from becoming yet another exercise in colonization and imperialism – the users of IT must become cultural hybrids and polybrids who are fluent in the worldviews and communication preferences of more than one culture, so that our cross-cultural communications do not occur new media & society