Global culture, local cultures and the internet: The Thai example

This paper addresses the questions of whether and, if so, how and to what extent the Internet brings about homogenisation of local cultures in the world. It examines a particular case, that of Thai culture, through an investigation and interpretation of a Usenet newsgroup, soc.culture.thai. Two threads of discussion in the newsgroup are selected. One deals with criticisms of the Thai government and political leaders, and the other focuses on whether the Thai language should be a medium, or perhaps the only medium, of communication in the newsgroup. It is found that, instead of erasing local cultural boundaries, creating a worldwide monolithic culture, the Internet reduplicates the existing cultural boundaries. What the Internet does, on the contrary, is to create an umbrella cosmopolitan culture which is necessary for communication among people from disparate cultures. That culture, however, is devoid of thick backgrounds, in Michael Walzer's sense.     

A Review of “Marketing Today’s Academic Library: A Bold New Approach to Communicating with Students”

ABSTRACT

This paper contends that the potential of Usenet as an information tool is outstanding, but that librarians have been slow to realize this promise. By examining Usenet discussions, the paper looks at the issues involved in using Usenet, and discusses the notion that real information can only come from professionals. It concludes that Usenet is a valuable tool that needs to be developed, especially when determining what sources of information could best assist patrons.     

Tcl/Tk-based Agents for Mail and News Notification

Two agent implementations are described—one for mail notification and one for news notification. Both agents are implemented using Tcl. This paper provides a brief history and perspective of similar agents. Included are experiences using Tcl as an agent-implementation language, and comparisons of the results to similar agents. Also described are some new techniques of interest to Tcl programmers. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.