Digital Technologies and Traditional Cultural Expressions: A Positive Look at a Difficult Relationship

Digital technologies have often been perceived as imperilling traditional cultural expressions (TCE). This angst has interlinked technical and sociocultural dimensions. On the technical side, it is related to the affordances of digital media that allow instantaneous access to information without real location constraints, data transport at the speed of light and effortless reproduction of the original without any loss of quality. In a sociocultural context, digital technologies have been regarded as the epitome of globalization forces-not only driving and deepening the process of globalization itself but also spreading its effects. The present article examines the validity of these claims and sketches a number of ways in which digital technologies may act as benevolent factors. It illustrates in particular that some digital technologies can be instrumentalized to protect TCE forms, reflecting more appropriately the specificities of TCE as a complex process of creation of identity and culture. The article also seeks to reveal that digital technologies-and more specifically the Internet and the WorldWideWeb-have had a profound impact on the ways cultural content is created, disseminated, accessed and consumed. It is argued that this environment may have generated various opportunities for better accommodating TCE, especially in their dynamic sense of human creativity.