ABSTRACT
Mountains of discarded electronic equipment have appeared in southern China as ugly material consequences of the digital transition; cruel civil wars were fought in 1990s Congo over the minerals richer nations needed to produce telephones and games consoles. Web-based algorithms learn and improve with frequency of use and because they thrive on huge numbers, Google encourages users to join the ‘Translate’ community. Studies of diverse digital worlds could benefit from work showing how global cultural dynamics are not the exclusively Western project so often imagined. The new term ‘superdiversity’ refers to ‘the vastly increased range of linguistic, religious, ethnic, and cultural resources characterizing late modern societies’. Indonesia’s home-grown satellite system was launched in 1976, eventually proving instrumental in creating a modern-day variant of Anderson’s national audience. The December 2004 issue of Tren Digital magazine described how camera phones were rapidly and constantly improving.
