As globalized members of the internet community, we have lost touch with the bio-rhythms of our unique locations. We follow global fashions and share global concerns. By implication, we have lost touch with our immediate communities, our neighbourhoods, our streets and lanes.
Our issues may no longer be immediate and local. We might raise funds for Somalian children—which I cannot argue that it is not a worthy enough cause. The implication of our de-localized concerns is that we have also lost the sense of shared culture that comes with the feeling of belonging to a particular, specific and a locationally-defined community, which by definition is rooted in tradition, religion and inheritances.
To go back to one of the one of my earlier arguments, now more than ever culture can no longer be defined as a shared inheritance. Culture has moved to the personal sphere.
And, don’t these new practices of culture demand a redefinition of culture, and by implication also of multiculturalism?
Thus, to summarize the argument thus far:
Thesis 1: Humanism is bigger than culturalism
Thesis 2: Technology has redefined our social interactions and our sense of community
Thesis 3: Identity is no longer rooted in culture, community and religion. This is what it means to be a technobot
Thesis 4: Consequently historical issues have lost relevance as also have historical debates about multiculturalism.
Essays on Culture 