Global Culture

hyper as in linked, and local as in location

In a fascinating dispatch from the future, author Bruce Sterling brings us the ultimate global citizen: Harvey Feldspar, who as a modern Phileas Fogg describes his encounter with world cultures with the only difference that he does it from the year 2017.

If there is a lesson to be learned from his adventures is that the future knows exactly where you are. And this knowledge is transformed into a myriad of location-aware transactions that blend your reality with your virtual self into one coherent experience that enhances your appreciation for local cultures.

People worried that ubiquity would create a boring global techno-monoculture from Seoul to Siena. But it doesn’t play out that way. In Dubai, 80 percent of everybody is a foreigner, yet its characteristic bazaars and souks thrive. That’s partly because they automatically match global demands with local supply. The more the place hyperlocalizes, the more like itself it becomes.

I had explored the idea of homogenization -or monoculture- in the post jazz & macdonald’s and have constantly pushed forward the idea that migrants are among the most important forces shaping local cultures around the world; but the mastery with which Sterling settles the concerns the public may have had with the threat of global brands taking over our culture is possibly visionary. The mechanisms that will enable society to hyperlocalize, therefore allowing to grow stronger as a unique entity are still to be developed, but if the future is anything like his imagination suggests, we are going to be fine even if surrounded by information-hungry gizmos