The Rise of a Monoculture

                I like to count my blessings when I sit alone in my room on a rainy day. I’m thankful to have a TV in my room, I’m glad that my fridge is well stocked, and I’m grateful that last-night Michelle remembered to plug the laptop into its charger so it could be used this morning. My life is surrounded by technology I cannot see myself living without – the internet, the laptop, and the phone. These appliances are crucial to my everyday living, yet so many of these objects which I deem as necessities are frivolous in developing countries. But, the times are changing and third world countries are swiftly graced with the new technology brought on by the force we call ‘globalization.’

                
                   Lisa Nakamura tackles the effects of technological globalization in the introduction to her book, Cybertypes. She argues that race, and the “authentic aura” is disappearing on the web. Through her research, she discovered that virtual-world gamers often adopted a persona that gave them the flexibility of acting in a certain way without “real life” consequences. The anonymity the web allowed users to portray themselves in their “better selves.” Nakamura explains that this leads to a problem where the internet is covered in a “landscape of whiteness.” While technology is bringing people across the world together under one platform, it is also contributing to the rise of a monoculture. The rise of a monoculture leads to an erasure and replacement of cultures in less dominant communities. The fostering of the Western culture onto these cultures causes a “mental retraining,” in which cultures are cloned to be alike.

          
                   Nakamura’s points are valid: the Western influence onto some communities may result negatively. But is it really all that bad? A recent article published by the MIT Technology Review talks about how mobile communications are changing the health care in Nigeria drastically. Nigeria has gone from a country with only 30,000 cellular subscriptions to over 140 million in just ten years time. Now, nearly one in six residents owns a cell phone. This change has benefited Nigerian residents through faster forms of communication, particularly those related to doctor appointments and health emergencies.  The technology discussed in this particular example does not add or subtract to the diversity of cultures in Nigeria; the addition of cell phones to their communities does not take away the “authenticity” Nigeria had prior to the influx of technology.

                Societies are built to change – to be flexible to the norms and trends they are influenced by. While Nakamura’s argument is sufficient and plausible, I believe that we are far from engendering a monoculture. Although the virtual web presents a threat to third-world cultures, it is not as imminent as Nakamura makes it to be. Simply put, technology and globalization presents itself as an aide to less developed countries, while culture and “authenticity” is preserved by a community’s will to pass it on from generation to generation.