The Cultural Alienation And Cultural Identity Of The Internet Age

McLuhan, who is a communication-study giant of the 20 th century, had proposed the theory of the third form of culture in the Internet Age. The third form of culture is different from the other two forms of the Oral Age and the Print Age. And he had put forward the "re-tribe" term in order to reveal the similarity between the Internet Age and the Oral Age. Today the emergence of the Internet has proved that McLuhan’s predictive description is not empty words. Indeed, McLuhan had not just do the description job, but also do the evaluation. He had discusses the cultural characteristics implicitly or explicitly, of the Internet Age and the ages before, as well as the problems. The discussion can be found in the books of Understanding Media and Gutenberg Galaxy. This paper has borrowed the "re-tribe" theory that belongs to the thought system of McLuhan to explore the era significance of the "sensory rebalancing" from the perspective of cultural alienation and cultural identity, in an inventive way. Not only has the similarities between the Tribe Age and the Internet Age been discussed in this article, but also the differences. From the comparison of same or not, more focuses has been put in the hidden impact of new media, other than the dominant features. This paper attempts to reveal the role of the Internet, as a medium, in the shaping of the cultural identity, adopting the dialectical view in discussing the social and personal impact of the numbness. In fact, the numbness is the result of the most thoroughly self-amputation of the center nerve system. The first part of paper has analyzed the different cultural characteristics of the tribe culture and the de-tribal culture, pointing out that the oral tribal culture is based on the communication means of sound sense and has the characteristic of "balanced-sensory" of the overall thinking. On the other hand, the de-tribal culture is based on the communication means of visual sense and has the characteristic of "rational-sensory" of analyzing. The second part focuses on revealing the cultural problems in the pre-internet ages in the viewpoint of McLuhan, that the main problem of tribal culture lies in the conservatism and conformism, the main problem of de-tribal culture lies in the fragmentation of human and the rational egoism. Finally, the fourth part gives a summary conclusion of "re-tribe".