Is the Internet a “Culture”?

Gaudium et Spes defines the term, “culture” as indicating 

“Everything whereby man develops and perfects this many bodily and spiritual qualities; he strives by his knowledge and his labor, to bring the world itself under his control. He renders social life more human both in the family and the civic community, through improvements of customs and institutions. Throughout the course of time he expresses, experiences and desires that they might be of advantage to the progress of many, even of the whole human family.” (Gaudium et Spes, 53)

The definition appears thorough in its description of the multifaceted term “culture,” but what of the online culture? In order to analyze Internet culture, it’s necessary to first see where the World Wide Web fits into the Vatican’s definition.

The two seem incompatible at first glance, for where in the intangible cyberspace can a person “perfect his many bodily and spiritual qualities”? Some might argue that while the internet is largely a communications tool for social interaction, it seems inappropriate to say that cyberspace “renders social life more human.”

Despite being largely devoid of what is normally considered a huge part of communications, such as body language, facial expressions, and colloquialism to identify a person’s place of origin, the internet may be a valid ground for genuine human interaction. The internet provides a bizarrely poignant intimacy between strangers through anonymity, allowing those with common interests to bond with one another across vast geographical distance. Furthermore, it also provides a unique point of penetration for cultural insight to the outsider, through which an insider might give him a greater depth of understanding of another’s culture, something which might not be offered otherwise, and indeed given space, time, and language constraints, might never have been offered otherwise.

But is the internet just another means of communication, as if the social experience was simply moved to a different, practical, and more efficient medium? Here, I stand by Marshal McLuhan’s statement, “the medium is the message.” Certain methods of communication lend themselves to a particular message. For example, smoke signals are effective for communicating short updates on what is happening in the nearby village, but no one would think of engaging in a philosophical debate via smoke signals. Much the same can be said about Twitter.

These communication mediums not only shape the message, but they naturally create a culture surrounding it, with its own unwritten rules of what is acceptable and what is not. The online communication additionally provides a strange combination of personable and accountability of the online profile, mixed with the freedom of anonymity in forums and online discussions, does indeed make the online community a more human experience of social interaction.

With this in mind, its seems fitting to say that the internet does indeed provide opportunity for growth and development of the human culture through a dialogue which offers, “improvements of customs and institutions,” as well as a means by which man “expresses, communicates, and conserves his works, great spiritual experiences and desires, that they might be o advantage to the progress of many.”

The question then becomes, “Does the internet, as both a means of communication and its own culture, lend itself towards such meaningful interaction by which humanity may improve itself?”