Cyberculture communication has reshaped and redefined human-to-human communication on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Margaret Yard puts it more succinctly by saying that â[t]here is no longer an impersonal world, but a postpersonal world, where life has turned us into a databaseâ (Yard 2010, p. 215). Different from technoculture, where technological determinism has pushed human intelligence to look for shortcuts, cyberculture eclipses human intelligence and subjects it to its whims. While in the cyberworldâs communicative sphere, you automatically imbibe that culture of acquiescence. In failing to do so, you are ostracized as a netizen, and fall back to citizenship prepersonal and, to a larger extent, impersonal communications with the nonmachinized human world.
Since cyberworld communication is largely machinized, opening the door to that communication with others is tantamount to venerating interactions with avatars, and there are consequences. It is these consequences this book intends to tackle, specifically with respect to noncyber African cultures and cyberworld intrusions, bearing in mind Marshall McLuhanâs dictum that indeed â[t]he medium is the messageâ (McLuhan 1964). Therefore, some people are not privy to receiving certain messages if they choose not to use a specific medium or have access to it.
The discussion on cyberculture does not include what Lister et al. (2003) call artificial intelligence, network programming, etc. Rather, it approaches this topic from a human, virtual, 24-hour omnipresent perspective. They proceed in their arguments by stating that âtechnology affects human cultureâ (p. 289). Indeed, it does, and that is why the postcolonial new media electronic communication interface has transformed the human-to-human oral communication that was oftentimes referred to as face-to-face communication (FtF). Many Western scholars, including James Carey and Harold Innis, have agreed with this. James Carey describes how Harold Innis views media intrusion into nascent cultures by stating that â[t]he increasing facility with which electronic media penetrated national boundaries worried Innis because it increased the capacities of imperialism and cultural invasion. Innis considered âmonopoliesâ, whether of electrical technology or, for that matter, rigid orthodoxy, threats to human freedom and cultural survivalâ (Carey 1992, p. 135).
Rantanen (2005) has also shared this sentiment in his book, The Media and Globalization, that âhomogenizationâ (p. 74) of culture is due to globalization of the media that is largely driven and monitored with Western media oligarchs. Consequently, âattitudes and valuesâ (p. 74) have been affected adversely in developing countries. Grosswiler (2009) even goes the extra mile to hammer the issue this way: âMedia scholars agree that people everywhere prefer their own media, in their own language, for their own cultureâ (p. 118).
Western media, using their own languages, have invaded native language spaces in most developing countries, and the fear espoused by Innis is vindicated in the twenty-first century. Nascent cultures in Africa are being deracinated as a result of Western technologyâs unapologetic intrusion.
Imagine the disruption that beeps and ringtones can make in an interpersonal, in-person communication between humans in the Western world. Not only do the interactants refocus their discussion after the interruption of the âthird party,â but they shift the tone, tenor, and mood depending on the effect of that external call or message on the interlocutors. Antony Giddensâs structuration theory attempts to prevent the inevitability of this intrusion if sociocultural norms are transplanted into the electronic sphere. But the extent to which this can go in developing countries knee-deep in impersonal communication dynamics is still unknown. The intrusion of beep sounds or ringtones is analogous to someone eavesdropping and making this unwarranted Western innovative tool too intrusive, distractive, disrespectful, and distasteful. Unfortunately, this is the seed that new Western human-to-human communication is planting in Africa. How this is going to germinate and influence century-long, in-person communal interaction is anybodyâs guess. I think the answer is blowing somewhere in the wind.
Suffice it to say, telephone, radio, newspaper, and television, to an extent, were milder with respect to in-person communicative spaces. They did not affect communal, nonelectronic, face-to-face communication in any significant way because tropical African culture as we know it did not shift much from its original stance. The small people in southeastern Cameroon (Joiris 1996) and the Bushmen and Hottentots in South Africa still practice their old communicative methods to get to other human creatures. Drums, gongs, vuvuzelas, and other man-made tools of communication were still being used in kingdoms and chiefdoms in West Africa, especially among the non-Western-educated citizens. That is no longer the case since mobile communicative technologies have invaded kingdoms on some parts of the continent (Tita and Agbome 2016, in press).
Human culture and freedom can be salvaged from extinction from new media technologies only if they are blended to respond to the exigencies of nascent cultural prerogatives. There has to be a hybridization of traditional cultures and cybercultures so as to restore individual human freedoms in a given cultural context in the Western world or Africa. For such an initiative to succeed, research into existing cultural expectations should serve as a prerequisite for introducing new ones. A top-bottom approach, according to James Carey and Harold Innis, only helps to annihilate burgeoning local cultures, especially in developing countries.
References
Carey, J. W. (1992). Communication as culture. New York: Routledge.
Grosswiler, P. (2009). Continuing media controversies. In A. Debeer & J. C. Merrill (Eds.), Global journalism (pp. 115â130). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Joiris, D. V. 1996. A comparative approach to hunting rituals among Baka pygmies (South Eastern Cameroon). In S. Kent (Ed.), Cultural diversity among 21st century foragers: An African perspective (pp. 245â276). Cambridge.
Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., & Kelly, K. (2003). New media: A critical introduction. New York: Routledge.
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extension of man. New York: McGraw Hill.
Rantanen, T. (2005). The media and globalization. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Tita, C. J., & Agbome, S. (2016, in press). ICTs and power relations in traditional settings in Cameroon. In K. Langmia & T. Tyree ( Eds.), Social media: Culture and identity (pp. 133â155). Lexington Press.
Yard, M. (2010). Cyberworld: The colonization of intersubjectivity. Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychology, 32(1â2), 215â226.
