Cultural Diversity or Global Monoculture The Impacts of the
Information Age  Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of
Technology   Paper Prepared for Conference on "The Global
Village" Bangalore, Karnataka, India  November 2, 1998   The
coming of the "Information Age" is the topic of thousands of
books, articles, and conferences, including this one.
Predictions range from outrageous optimism to dire pessimism; we
have analyses from a Marxist, a neo-liberal, an anthropological,
and many other perspectives; we have advocates and critics; we
have more words on the subject than any human being could
possibly absorb.  But what we do not have, at least not in
sufficient quantity or depth, are analyses of the cultural
implications of the new information technologies. By "cultural
implications" I mean their relationship to the basic
presuppositions, fundamental myths, unstated assumptions,
linguistic taken-for-granteds, historic grounds and creation
myths that unite a society: all of those conceptual, linguistic,