Cultural Preservation in the Digital Age
One of the benefits of the internet and advances in transportation technologies has of course, been bringing humanity closer together. This has also created some problems. Some minor and some rather unpleasant. Much of both outcomes, we now know. One of the bigger challenges as we move further into the Digital Age, is protecting cultural diversity.
While it may seem that loss of cultures is inevitable and underway, our interconnectivity and digital technologies may in fact, play a vital role in protecting cultural diversity.
As we become more connected, both through communications and transportation technologies, it means more cultures are at risk of being diluted or so deeply absorbed into a more dominant one that it effectively disappears.
There is reason, however, to hope. While we may easily speculate that dominant cultures like Western and Chinese sociocultural systems could result in a global monoculture or perhaps two or three dominant cultures, this is not inevitable. And highly unlikely.
There are just over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, some 3,000 or so are expected to go extinct in the coming decades. Some no doubt, will. That’s been happening ever since we started talking to one another. Languages have branched out and evolved. Some die from oppression, others as populations…
