Cultures and technology: An analysis of some of the changes in progress-digital, global and local culture

Abstract

The analysis presents some reflections on the changes produced by the use of digital technologies in contemporary Western societies. The scope is to understand the occurrences of the recent past, from the second half of the 1900s, and what is happening in social and individual experiences today. To devise a future, to decide how, when and what to offer in order to transmit to young people the fields of knowledge and skills that will be of use for managing their future successfully in a changing Europe. The prevailing theoretical approach is from an anthropological cultural point of view with interdisciplinary encounters. The chapter is divided into three parts: the first two are general reflections on the role of digital technologies in the past and present and focus on questions, expectations, characteristics that have interested scholars over time. The third level looks at the problematic features of people who were born after 1980, the so-called ‘digital natives’.