How Different Cultures View Technology
The fascinating ways different cultures are navigating the digital age.
Your grandmother has learned how to text, teenagers speak fluent TikTok, and somewhere in Tokyo, a robot is serving tea with perfect ceremonial grace to customers who bow respectfully in return. In Saudi Arabia, they are using AI tools to enhance hospitality and service, while navigating religious and traditional considerations.
Cultures around the world have a wide variety of ways in which they see technologies. This impacts how fast and the ways in which, any given technology will be adopted. It’s been this way since we created speech and stone tools (or was that the Neanderthals?) and then writing.
So are cultures adopting newer technologies faster? Are we coming together as a species as a result, or, counterintuitively, are we seeing the emergence of distinct digital cultures?
The Japanese embrace robots as spiritual beings, Scandinavians treat their digital wellness like a sacred practice and Chinese people have evolved WeChat into a reflection of it’s complex social structures.
How Different Cultures See Technologies
Scandinavians tend to see technology’s role as tools for human flourishing. That there must always be balance in life with how a technology is used. This reflects their approach to social democracy itself. Danish schooled teach digital citizenship alongside traditional subjects. In Finland they have digital sabbaths where phones are collectively powered down during meals, a form of respecting family values of community.
In Japan, they see robots as temporary manifestations of human craftsmanship and so robots deserve some form of respect. Then there’s the cultural practice of tsukumomogami, that objects acquire souls long after use.
Mediterranean cultures, which tend to have strong extended family structures use social media to reinforce rather than replace in-person connections.
China’s WeChat became a SuperApp not because some tech company integrated a whole bunch of services into one platform, but because WeChat reflected China’s complex social structures (guanxi, or relationship networks). It was Chinese culture that enabled WeChat, not the technology itself. A primary reason SuperApps have failed in the West.
South Korea enacted the “Shut down” law for online gaming, restricting hours spent for minors. This wasn’t seen as government overreach. It is seen as part of “jeong”, a cultural concept of affectionate concern for community members.
The Indigenous peoples of Australia have made extensive use of GPS mapping for sacred sites, while also being careful to preserve some secrecy for those outside the community, yet sharing with broader society.
Even TikTok is viewed and used differently around the world. In America it’s about fun and dances, in India it is seen as a tool of education and Iran for political dissent.
In a way, each culture had developed its own “code” if you will, for how they see technologies. These codes have evolved over thousands of years and are not easily uprooted by technology hype cycles, even today.
In America, the code is individualistic, with technology seen as “liberation” and all about personal freedoms.It’s about innovation and minimal constraints. In European society, technology views are often about harm prevention and the protection of human rights. East Asians view technologies from the perspective of harmony while in India and Africa, technology is viewed as leapfrogging older technologies and customs.
The first mobile payment systems in the world didn’t come out of Silicon Valley as one might expect, but rather in Kenya with the M-Pesa system. This arose there because of culture. The custom of harambee, a tradition of pooling community resources. It digitised the social practice of mutual aid and collective financial responsibility.
Technology and Cultural Adoption
Digital technologies, especially the internet, social media and the devices we use to connect this global information system, create shared experiences at hyper-speed in a way humanity has never experienced. But the meaning-making of these tools and our use of them operates at cultural speeds that haven’t changed that much for thousands of years. Mostly since we started planting stuff in the ground and hanging around each other more.
Cultures that have what I call cultural viscosity levels integrate technologies at different speeds. The higher the cultural viscosity (stronger traditional structures, clearer hierarchies and more ritual) tend to adopt technologies slower. But often more successfully. High viscosity cultures create cultural buffers that prevent technology anomie. They do this, almost subconsciously, to avoid losing core identity structures.
Then there’s the third-order effects of technologies on a culture and society. The development of different cognitive patterns. This is mostly seen through generational differences, such as the evolving language of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
If we look at second-order thinking as mental models, we see the emergence of different cultural vernaculars. Each culture developing its own grammar and rituals for how they interact with digital platforms. Culture it turns out, has more influence over technology than we might at first presume.
Korean nunchi (social awareness), has seen the development of uniquely sophisticated approaches to digital communication with regards to timing, emoji usage and managing parasocial relationships (such as with K-pop groups and stars) that other cultures are only beginning to understand.
A Global Monoculture?
To hear it from the Western way of thinking, digital technologies, such as social media platforms, are going to create a global monoculture. This is a singular viewpoint of how Silicon Valley platforms think everyone will use technology. It is a very narrow view and lacks understanding of the cultural complexities of our world. It’s not wrong, it’s just very shuttered.
What we’re really starting to see is cultural blending at the surface of cultures. Such as mixups of Indian music with Scottish bagpipes (which is super cool) and dance routines from different cultures. But these are surface only, they aren’t meaningful, deep cultural change.
Instead we are seeing a greater defining of cultures through digital mediums. Indigenous cultures from the Maori in New Zealand to the Mi’kmaw of Atlantic Canada are using these tools to educate other cultures, but also to better define their own culture.
While it may at first seem that this would lead to greater cultural divisions and thus friction between cultures, I’d argue that it enables greater learning between cultures. When we understand each other better, when we learn, we tend to be less fearful of other cultures. We find the commonalities and we find ways to understand each other and work together. In the short term there are frictions and clashes, but over the longer term, history shows we prefer to get along than not.
As much as any one culture might believe its technology is absolutely brilliant and everyone everywhere all at once will love it and use it, that’s just not reality. Humanity is a rich and brilliant tapestry of different traditions, customs, norms and behaviours. Culture is the ultimate arbiter of all technologies. That’s not about to change anytime soon.
Thanks!