IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 78

human life, as various cultures and communities across
the globe have long been affected by each other and
people in various exchanges have been borrowing pieces of different lifestyle puzzles from one another.
There's no doubt that these cultural exchanges have
expanded along with the development of communication tools and visual media. But the point is that these
changes have been in the superstructure of cultures,
not in the intellectual roots and infrastructures of communities. Ihde's own examples regarding the effects of
pluriculture are mostly in the field of cooking, music,
and other superstructural examples. But one might ask
Ihde about two cultures that have some contradictory
principles. In such circumstances, which Ihde himself
acknowledges, for example regarding Islamic countries,
could he still speak of pluriculture?
In one of his works, Fazeli, an Iranian sociologist
devoted to examining the experience of modernization
of Iranian society, compares old Iranian houses of not
so long ago with today's houses. Iranian houses and
architecture have portrayed various aspects of Iranian
civilization from a long time. Nowadays different examples of these houses exist as museums in cities like
Kashan, Yazd, and Isfahan. One of the most important
features of these traditional houses is the privacy of
family members. All parts of traditional Iranian houses
are designed in a way to keep families safe from being
observed by non-family members. From the kitchen, the
sleeping room and the guest room11 and even the door
locks are all designed and developed based on these
cultural infrastructures.12 In these houses, the housewife is in charge of steering the household and is the
person upon whom all members of the family rely. The
home is a refuge in which peace and tranquility of the
outside and inner vitality and joy are combined. However, if you visit modern homes in these traditional Iranian
cities, you would never see any of these features.
Instead, you would witness a home so openly designed
that, from the kitchen to the guest room, the yard and
the bedroom are all visible and bare. According to Fazeli, the reason behind this change in architecture is the
impact of the media and the desire to be seen and
included as part of the media's narrative in all aspects
of the Westernized man's life and the consequent transferrance of the concept to contemporary Iranian society
with a set of tools and ideas [9, pp. 90-94].
Here we are faced with two completely conflicting
approaches to the dignity of women and the family
11
They are locally called " Andaru
¯ ni " and " Biru
¯ ni " which have different
meanings of inner rooms (reserved for family members only) and guest
rooms. They design it such that it provides privacy to family members and
keeps them away from the gaze of strangers; no modern equivalents exist.
12
Door knockers in traditional houses were of two types: one with a specific
sound for family members and women, and another with a different sound
for strangers.

between the teachings of Islam and the West. Obviously, one cannot reconcile these two approaches to each
other. This contradiction in cultural infrastructure is not
confined to Islamic ideology and similar examples can
be found in most of the rooted cultures and several-hundred-year civilizations. Another example is the contradiction of traditional Japanese culture with Western
culture during what is known as The Perry Expedition in
1853. Before the year 1853, Japanese who were following the policy of isolation for nearly 220 years, banning
almost all foreign nations, including nations from the
West, from entering the country, were forced to surrender by Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy and
his so-called Black Ships and open the borders to Western countries. The Japanese government soon decided
to turn Japan from a traditional country to a modern
and advanced one in the technological arena. Thus,
there came many contradictions and disagreements
within society as a result of this transition, some of
which were very bloody, such as the Samurai rebellion
under the leadership of Saigo Takamori13 [13].
The greatest testimony to the unresolved contradictions between Western-style technological development
and the traditional Japanese culture is a book by Fukuzawa, a well-known Japanese scholar, written at the peak
of modern Japan's founding years. In the second and
third chapters of his book, Fukuzawa admires the West
for what he calls the glorious civilization, lamenting Japanese culture's failure to reach the heights of such a civilization. He then concludes that the task of contemporary
Japan is to reach the West by choosing the path of progress rather than retrogression. In Fukuzawa's view, civilization has two aspects: material and spiritual. The first is
comprised of the tools and outer means of civilization,
and the second is the spirit of civilization. In order to
achieve civilization, the spirit of civilization must be
acquired; and so, if Japan seeks the benefits of Western
civilization, it must acquire its spirit [12, p. 48]. According
to Fukuzawa, in the dispute between a monarchy and a
republican system or in any similar social or intellectual
conflicts, it does not matter which side should be the
winner, but what really matters is to see which side of the
dispute has no contradictions with the goals of Western
civilization. Fukuzawa believes that the intellectual and
cultural arena is considered the most important element
of civilization, and Japan must compete with the West
and take it as a role model in this arena14 [12, pp. 49-51].
The above-mentioned examples are just some of the
things that indicate that Ihde's idea of pluriculture, if not
false, is at least flawed and inaccurate to some extent.
13
For more information on the reasons for the rebellion of Samurai led by
Takamori, see The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori
[38, ch. 5-6].
14
To learn more about Japanese cultural conflicts with the West see [11, ch. 8-9].

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DECEMBER 2020

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020

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