Sacred space in cyberspace : an African perspective

Abstract

Although information can currently be regarded as a vehicle of mainly western civilisation and culture, Africans should not merely accept it as such, because that would imply subjugation to anew, techno-cultural colonialism. On the other hand, we cannot simply ignore technology and try to return to a completely traditional was of doing things. The solution is to accept that a process of acculturation should take place, in which we embrace the new technology, but use it to enrich the information society by promoting African human values. These values are based on the concept of Ubuntu or shared humanity, which also forms the basis for reconciliation in the Semitic world. After exploring the literature on the relationships between science, technology, belief systems and religion, a particular, non-threatening way of using information technology is proposed in which African human values would be embraced