Authors:

 Dauber, Roslyn.

Title:

 Indigneous Tibetan Bon Wisdom in Cyberspace: Interactive Cultural Survival in the Digital Age

Keywords:

 cyberspace, indigenous, cross-cultural, design
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Abstract:

 "The Tibetan Bonpo Media Archive Project" is an experiment using digital media to preserve and present the vanishing religious and cultural icons of the Bonpo. The leadership of these indigenous Tibetans strive to continue their religious tradition as refugees in India and Nepal. In response to their leader's request for assistance from the author, digital media was chosen to record, preserve, and present rituals and artifacts. Multimedia formats, non-linear and interactive, provide an ideal context for their ancient conception of reality expressed through music, ritual, dance, and art. The significance of this experiment is twofold: 1) The 'modernized' Bonpo have the immediate benefit of having access to ancient icons unseen for thirty-five years, important to their cultural identity and renewal. 2) New frontiers in cyberspace can be tested by tracking response to the presentation of Bon culture electronically. How does the web serve cross-cultural communication?

There are cybertheorists that say the very act of transmitting information electronically, digitally, almost instantaneously transforms how humans think, how society frames knowledge, and shatters global & cultural boundaries forever. Cyberspace has the potential to dissolve the solid monuments of enlightenment science. It is here that intriguing possibilities open for introducing non-Western, non-linear based cultural concepts. For many theorists and researchers, like David Tomas (1993), cyberspace would be nothing more than a 'waste of space' if it did not become the site of new communities that offer significant cultural promise. How are cultural coordinates going to be changed by access to the internet?

Cyberspace can be conceived of as a new land in which natural laws and social dynamics can be defined. Based on personal aesthetics and cultural roots people bring different design ideas to new media. The "Bonpo Tibetan Media Archive Project " is an opportunity for a Western mediamaker to explore a non-linear, impressionistic mode of communication that is ancient and attempt its translation into a digital format. The very form is akin to and compliments the Bon's shamanistic worldview. The paper presentation will be accompanied by the Archive website.
Dauber, Roslyn. Roslyn.Dauber@Colorado.edu Associate Professor School of Journalism & Mass Communication Colorado Roslyn Dauber is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado's School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Boulder, Colorado. Here she teaches New Media Use and Design, and the Social Impacts of New Media. Her current research work studies interface design issues in regards to gender. Her consulting work for Netsage is on the use of avatars and intelligent agents for education. Ms. Dauber has launched the "Tibetan Bonpo Archive Project" to explore the use of new media for the cultural survival of indigenous people. Since Roslyn Dauber published her book with Melinda Cain on, THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ON WOMEN IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES in 1982, (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado) she has worked on media projects specializing in indigenous people, including ANDEAN WOMEN IN PERU, MENRI MONASTERY (on the Tibetan Bonpo) and BROKEN RAINBOW, the Academy-Award winning documentary on the Navajo-Hopi land dispute in the Four Corners area. Prior to film-making she worked as a science policy analyst for the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and specialized in international science and technology policy for development. She has worked as a private consultant evaluating women and development projects. Ms. Dauber has a Master's degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University and a Master's degree in Communications Management from the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. She attended the U.N.Conference on Science and Technology for Development, the UN Habitat Conference, and the UN Women's Conferences in 1980 and 1995..