Global Meta-culture

The predictable outcome of the development of a digital information revolution will be the completely horizontalized transmission of culture and "meta-culture." I look into my digital crystal-ball and forecast trends I see developing in the future, and some of their possible consequences in our shared world.

The basis for global meta-culture thus will be a form of e-culture, or what can be called an e-based culture, but it will derive ultimately from the rise of e-commerce in governing market systems and exchange networks in the world. E-commerce will continue to increase in volume and take more and more of the global market, as well as larger ranges of the market continuum. The distances and boundaries separating original producer from ultimate consumer will begin shrinking, as well as the number of middle-men who manage and manipulate these market networks. Ultimately, through forums like E-bay, goods will not only be widely distributed, but even more widely redistributed.

Transportation of products, in increasingly small and individual packages carried long distances in short-time spans, will increase in volume as well as in efficiency and this will come to play a key middle-man role in the future.

We can speak of a "revolution of information" being the consequence of the basic informational equality created by free and unlimited access to the Internet. This will be a common voice raised by many different peoples for similar kinds of reforms and a greater demand for a larger piece of the global e-commerce pie.

How long will it take to achieve this level of global meta-cultural development is a big and probably unanswerable question. It would happen sooner than later if there were not a lot of primarily political and social obstacles standing in the way and offering resistance to this kind of development on a broad or even scale. And of course, this kind of revolution based on the Internet would only be a pretext and prelude to a much wider scale kind of change that would need to occur--this would include the redistribution of people in a number of ways: 1) in relation to land and the resources derivative of the land, especially food and water; 2) in relation to energy and the production and distribution of energy; 3) in relation to other people. We cannot say what this pattern of redistribution will look like, but I suspect that rates and distances of relocation, with multiple relocation events over a single lifetime, to increase as transportation becomes more available, more widespread, and overall, less expensive. At the same time, I think people will increasingly choose mobility over geographical stability because of the rates at which employment and distribution of resources will shift in patterns of demographic distribution.

This leads to questions as to forms of habitation and housing that will become commonplace worldwide. I see it something like the leasing framework of automobiles in America, where people never really come to own a car but regularly recycle for a newer car while paying monthly leases, with the option of leasing to own. I can imagine housing being managed and leased in a similar way, with people eventually "trading" in a place for a newer one.

At the same time, I see greater increases in the amount of trans-national migration occurring, structurally and socially motivated, and leading to a complex form of "ethno-social" stratification that is characteristic of global society. People will increasingly become identified with resident ex-pat or resident alien populations and the ranks of such communities worldwide will be continuously turning over. In many instances this might aggravate conflict between communities and individuals of different communities for which there are strong and deep cleavages. At the same time, I see the Internet based economy functioning as a kind of pariah-capitalist buffer and intermediary in potentially conflicting relations that might occur between groups.

At the same time, I see a deepening symbolic interiorization of more complex and stratified systems of psycho-social identification occurring, such that one's basic identity and sense of identity will itself become more complex, more contextually and situationally defined and more modular. I can see identity and sense of social solidarity shifting from the organic and mechanical models of Durkheim toward a more dynamic and modular model of identification and social relation. Basic ethnocultural and familial identity will become increasingly less important, except in certain contexts where this tends to be more emphasized. At the same time, if one is busy relocating from one region to another, especially across state boundaries, one can expect that one will shed old clothes for new in the process, and the new clothes will look pretty much like the old ones anyway. 

I would like to think there will be emergence of a new world identity, as a world citizen, but I believe this will take a degree of structural integration of systems that is as yet further off than the kind of social and cultural integration and patterning of response that is expected to occur first. Vikings for instance invaded the British Isles, especially in the north. They invaded into Central Russia along the Volga river. In these regions where they settled as traders, merchants and farmers, the brought their cultures with them. They caused some cultural displacement but eventually their cultural patterns were absorbed and amalgamated with the host ethno-cultures of their new homelands. The result was probably the creolization of entirely new ethnocultural blends. This is the kind of process one would expect and hope to see happening in a future world that is united by a common Internet framework. We may see traditional tribes people with cell phones and shopping at Walmart, and modern peoples living in traditional shelters and wearing traditional clothes from foreign lands.

It is expectable that world population growth will achieve its own natural limits and begin tapering off as increasing numbers of women and families institute voluntary and self-disciplined regimens of birth control, in spite of cultural constraints or other institutional frameworks or beliefs that might interfere with such practices. Empowerment is one of the benefits of the information revolution--this is ultimately about self-empowerment, and the increased sense and range of choice that comes with greater control over one's life. 

Death rates globally are expected to rise in the future with increasing population. Disease will be a main agency of increased death rates. Conflict that occurs on a limited scale, including political or interethnic conflict, as well as criminal victimization, may in fact increase overall. Increased numbers of deaths due to dramatic or sudden displacement or disaster is also likely to increase in frequency.

But a lot of these kinds of patterns will ultimately depend upon the political and economic future of the world, and the history of relations between different nations and peoples. These are outcomes that are not so much a matter of pattern and systems development, but more a consequence of human intention and unintended consequences. While the global system becomes more integrated, it will or should become more robust and secure from system-wide "critical events" but at the same time regionally or locally more susceptible to major events occurring in a basically unpredictable but catastrophic manner.

Authoritarian power structures typically depend upon information control and propagandistic manipulation of worldview and opinion for the sake of keeping people in line and maintaining authority. Large totalitarian governments like China have a strongly vested interest in keeping tight tabs on their "China Net" and preventing the Chinese people from having any effective contact with the larger internet. This is only partly successful, as the China-net system leaks at multiple points and with increasing frequency.

Chinese government, one party and totalitarian, has a vested interest in maintaining tight control over about 2 billion souls--they in effect control between a third and a quarter of all humanity. This is both a huge resource and a huge responsibility, and can become a tremendous liability in hard times and a tremendous asset in good times. The Chinese communists are meeting their futures inventively and half-openly, but are committed to remaining in complete control over their nation and their corner of the world for the indefinite future. They are also committed to increasing their sphere of control and to achieving structural, social and cultural dominance worldwide. The rest of humanity should not be mistaken about these goals of the Chinese government or the potential threat it poses for the rest of the world and itself in the structure of the long run.

Islamic countries, and the Moslem population overall that totals more than a billion souls, are countries that may upon certain levels interfere with systemic development or react in a conservative manner to such development as it occurs. We can probably expect increasing Moslem based terrorism in the world, at least during the next couple of decades, and these are bound to have overall a destabilizing and braking influence upon global systems development. In the long run, I do not know what will become the most feared, the random acts of terror that will be perpetrated by extreme fundamentalist Islamic groups, or the reactions to these acts of terrors that they will inevitable lead to. We can look to a widespread escalation of a cycle of violence much as we witness between Israel and Palestine, though occurring on a larger scale internationally.

With this kind of problem, there is another phenomenon that is occurring, and this is the horizontal proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the downsizing and broadening of the spectrum of design and deployment of such weapons. This pattern will tend on one hand to put otherwise small and weak nations on a more even playing field with the traditional large and powerful nations, and at the same time, invite incidents of mass destruction or limited regional/areal holocaust by agencies that are basically unstable and irrational.

I think one positive trend that has been occurring is the rise of multi-state structural frameworks, like the European Economic Union, and a pan-African organization that is capable of meeting needs and problems within Africa more effectively in a coordinate manner than can either Europeans or other nations or nations that are not united under a common umbrella. I see no boundaries of region or shared borders or areas in a world increasingly integrated by the Internet, and therefore the possibilities and likelihood for such inter-state cooperation and structural confederation for mutual gain only increases, even by states that are otherwise remote, distant and different from one another.

In this context, I see the goals and dream of a pan-national framework like the United Nations coming to greater realization and becoming a more effective agency in dispute mediation and conflict adjudication between nations and peoples.

The question arises as to what will a "global meta-culture" look like in terms of basic values, habits and material life. I look into my systems crystal ball and I see a kind of universal or global education as a part of this, and thus the foundation of basically international educational frameworks and systems that transcend national and other ethnic boundaries. I see also a common push towards greater freedom from constraints of all kinds, culturally defined and therefore relative, as well as increasing opportunity for more people to participate in the global system in a productive manner. Modernization as we know it will continue with the provisioning of newer and newer models and designs that become increasingly integrated and streamlined in a functional manner towards what can be called optimal solution sets. This has been happening, I believe, in the automobile industry, and automobile manufacture is becoming more widespread in the world.

It would be nice to think and expect that people will eventually work out their ideological and religious differences, especially in a peaceful manner, but I doubt and suspect that they never really will, at least not completely. If the basis for the drive for organized religion is structural insecurity and ambivalence, then if structural insecurity and ambivalence can be decreased and systems stability increased, we should expect to see a decline in the social motivational factors influencing the rise of religious movements, especially extreme religious cult movements. We should always expect this to occur. We hope only that such occurrences will not become commonplace and widespread in the world as a consequence of global integration and the rise of a global meta-culture.