Digital Globalization?

In Edward Wilson-Lee's book "The Tower of Secrets - The Parallel Worlds of Cam?es and Dami?o de Góis", the author confronts us with an observation that shatters a certain prosaic view of globalization.

Regarding the encounter between Europe and the other continents that the maritime expansion of the 15th and 14th centuries brought about, the author notes that "the meeting of cultures from all over the globe that had such different ideas about so many aspects of life, from eating and fasting to clothing, weather, astronomy, sex, and gender, suggested that there was nothing inevitable, necessary or imminently better about many European ideas and beliefs. Instead, it was only the perspective from which one looked that made it seem that this was the only natural way of doing things (...)" (1)

And yet the same author is surprised that "five centuries after maritime traffic between Europe and the world began in earnest, the cultures of Africa, Asia, and the New World remain largely unknown to most Europeans" concluding that "we live in a global square, but it is shocking how provincial and fearful of the outside world our cultures remain" (1).

Looking at the new digital globalization we are experiencing today, the observation doesn't seem to differ much from the result of the globalization of the 15th and 14th centuries.

Automating the digitalized flow of information (2) has created an increasingly standardized perception of reality. By accentuating everyone's focus on their digital navel, this computerized globalization has fostered a progressive tribalisation of global society, rather than promoting its natural multiculturalism.

The signs are clear. In the growth of nationalist populisms, the worsening of micro identities, the profusion of disinformation about other communities, and the continued commercial imposition of a standardized "taste" on a global scale.

The recent tendency to be dazzled by algorithmic certainty to the detriment of the subjective plurality of human thought only exacerbates this secular realization that globalisations oppress or at least omit "divergent" sociocultural manifestations in favor of the "dominant" culture.

Modern "intelligent" search engines tend to provide us with the information that is closest to our "tastes", be they political, club-related, gastronomic, or other. And relegate to the background all manifestations that diverge from our "normal", or the most "common" within the community in which we live.

In other words, in a society where we are told that everything is accessible at the click of a mouse, we increasingly access more of the same, reinforcing our conversion to the dominant culture and distancing ourselves from anything that conflicts with that worldview.

As Edward Wilson-Lee so brilliantly shows us in the book cited above, we still prefer the heroic idea of a superior civilization presented to us by Cam?es (3), to the vision of a multicultural world with different visions equally worthy of knowledge that led Dami?o de Góis (4) to be condemned by the Inquisition.

"There are few more effective demonstrations of this impulse than the world we now live in, freely and globally connected as before, and yet relentlessly constructing for itself ways of limiting its vision beyond what is extremely local or similar." (1)

PDV

2024

#48k #digitalsociology #digitalpsychology #informatics #globalisation #psychobiology #provincialism #internet #artificialintelligence #xenophobia #racism #equality #tolerance

Notes:

(1) From the book of Edward Wilson-Lee. The Tower of Secrets - The parallel worlds of Cam?es and Dami?o de Góis. Bertrand Editora. Lisbon. 2022. (Portuguese translation by Jo?o Pedro Tapada).

(2) See my article “Information Flow and Artificial Intelligence”: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/information-flow-artificial-intelligence-pedro-dias-ven%2525C3%2525A2ncio-32yaf%3FtrackingId=jVnzxq03TWm%252FvwLDmctOjw%253D%253D/?trackingId=jVnzxq03TWm%2FvwLDmctOjw%3D%3D

(3) See Luiz Vaz de Cam?es biographie at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luis-de-Camoes

(4) See Dami?o de Gois biographie at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Damiao-de-Gois