The first Culturemondo Asia Pacific Summit, organized by TELDAP and the Culturemondo Asia-Pacific Secretariat came to a successful conclusion in Taipei on January 22. The theme of this summit was “displaying Culture: Social media and Internet Computing. Responsible persons from global cultural networks (Culturemondo), scholars  and experts from New Zealand, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the UK and Taiwan put their heads together and pondered over Internet era cultural issues.

Over the two days of the summit attendees carried out in-depth discussion of cultural portal operation and how cultural portals can be linked to the social network systems, that vibrantly developing today, for cultural management work. In different societies cultural management methods are very different. This summit was a timely reminder of the diversity of global culture. Mr. Shahidul Alam, for example, introduced a photography exhibition, always low profile when held in Taiwan, in Bangladesh that, as a result of the efforts of Mr. Alam and Bangladeshi cultural workers, became a noisy carnival for the people of Dhaka. 

Management of the culture of Taiwan’s indigenous people was a main topic of discussion during the summit. New legislator for Taidong County Mr. Kuen-Cheng Lai was invited to talk and described the cultural connections between the culture of Taiwan’s aborigines and other Austronesian peoples. Indigenous people who attended the summit also spoke of their fears for the future of their languages on the digital platform. Dr. Der-Tsai Lee , TELDAP  deputy program director, expressed the view that aborigine legislators and aborigine people can cooperate and put forward a way of resolving the problem of writing their languages on the digital platform so that aborigine culture finds a firm foothold in the information age.

In the view of attendees, the main future influence of social media on mankind will be that it will facilitate an unprecedented amount of communication/interaction between people and create much new “content”. Although there is a large amount of negative behavior on-line, the Internet will offer much more space and possibilities for reinterpreting and re-observing “cultural” content. The website established for the summit was a good example. Any Internet user could, through Twitter or Facebook or other social network, keep up with the summit’s latest news and developments. This illustrates the massive impact that the Internet is having in terms of shrinking distance of time and space and facilitating interpersonal relations. For example, e-newsletter staff were not able to attend the last stages of the summit because of other work commitments so couldn’t carry out face to face interviews, however the news announced by the summit on Twitter said that Dr. Li said during closing discussions that Academia Sinica is to set about establish an Open Information System that can be used to rapidly integrate resources when there is a disaster, increasing the efficiency of disaster relief work. The same system can also be used as a culture portal. The source of this news and the process by which it became part of the e-newsletter is a good example of the convenience that the Internet has brought and will bring mankind.

 
In the past, culture portals emphasized the preservation of cultural relics and one-way dissemination of information, however, after online social networks have gradually become part of people’s lives, a new communication mode has formed. In the future more opinions from the masses and participation by the masses will become important culture portal activities and even an important part of contents. This summit was not just a chance for cultural workers in Taiwan to come together, it provided a chance to reconsider the cultural work implementation method from an international perspective. Through further exchange and cooperation it can be expected that cultural workers from around the world can find more ways of using the Internet to serve society.