World Culture and ICT use – a Study from Bhutan

The HCI community has recognized the importance of culture and to be culturally sensitive when designing interaction. Local culture should not be overlooked when designing. On the other hand, recent advances in theorizing of cultural patterns have reported that in some sectors, World Cultures has permeated institutions across the world. Such cultures can be said to consist of a dynamic system of values, beliefs, behaviours, norms, rules, tools and technologies, and show similar patterns across the world. If such a culture is present to the degree argued by World Culturalists, the scope for mutual understanding in international projects and global appropriation of technology may be larger than the current theorizing implies. In this paper we investigate the ICT use, with emphasis on World Culture, within Higher Education in Bhutan. We find a remarkably strong presence of World Culture among faculty members, and discuss the significance from the perspective that Bhutan ought to be a case with relatively weak presence of World Culture.