Iban on the Infobahn: Can We Integrate the Global Village without Annihilating Cultures?
R. W. Burniske · The English Journal · 1999
As a teacher of Elizabethan drama, I've learned to appreciate dialectics. While Shakespeare, I've discovered, as Altman points out, that the plays evolve from questions puzzling the playwright, the dramas giving form to debates that those questions inspire. This may explain why my initiation to global, educational telecomputing prompted investigation of the questions and debates inspired by such endeavors. Some of the most troubling questions stem from the issue of integration itself. While state, national, and international initiatives focus upon Internet connectivity, we would be wise to consider the cultural ramifications of integrating technology into classrooms and curricula. Though they are seductive, we ought to resist the fallacy that computer networks will inevitably integrate communities divided by race, ethnicity, and culture. No media will compensate for human flaws; they merely enable human expression. What's essential, therefore, is to begin with a fundamental question when we consider the impact of computer networks upon humanity: Can we integrate disparate groups and cultures without annihilating them in the process? Such questions became especially poignant when I moved to Malaysia in 1992 to take a teaching position at the International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL). Malaysia, after all, is an interesting place from which to argue such questions, if you can find people brave enough to venture an opposing viewpoint. And that is what the Internet meant to me during my four-year stint in that country: opposing or, at least, alternative viewpoints. Before locating the entrance ramp to the Infobahn, I felt as isolated as the Iban of Sarawak, but by the time I departed in June of 1996, the Internet made it possible to engage in dialectics rather than embrace the official story. Recent events in Southeast Asia not only challenge the concept of a global village, they also underscore the difficulty of integrating multinational, multicultural students through educational telecomputing.