The Lack of 'Whereness' : The Internet and Its Implications for National Identities and National Cultures

Abstract

Today nobody can deny that the global flows of the new media, which have already penetrated people's daily lives, are immense. The recent growth and maturity of the Internet clearly envisages a future of the perfectly computerised information society. On the other hand, it is also a fact that the menace to local identity as a counter-phenomenon of globalisation has been an object of argument. For example, since the preceding media such as radio and television became popular world-wide, it has been pointed out that the wave of Americanisation has undermined people's senses of national identity in other cultures. While the resistance against Americanisation has been overt in France, it is fairly obscure in the United Kingdom, as British people have taken an advantage of sharing 'English' in any Way. This ambivalent position of Britain-where some are keenly conscious of the threat of America's cultural colonisation- further leads us to the problem concerning the Internet, now prevailing on a global scale: we lose the sense of 'whereness' by getting accustomed to the Internet. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the Internet on national identities and cultures. In particular, I shall concentrate on the lack of 'whereness' when using computer networks, while comparing their situation and characteristics with other new media. At the same time, the way in which a deceptive notion of 'national' identity as a political/territorial matter, forged by states, is re-examined. By doing so, a positive perspective on the Internet is presented here, instead of giving a warning to the user not to lose his/her national identity: for the Internet is one of the ways to go beyond the restraints of the forced 'national' identities of the government or the nation-state, and to cultivate 'cultural' identity in 'imagined communities'.