Cultural diversity and political unity in the innovation ecosystem

Abstract

Culture transcends nature, or more precisely, it transforms it continuously. When Cicero would address the notion of culture as “excolere animum," he would point at our ability to farm and to render nature habitable. Culture is also a process of transformation at the societal and individual scale. From it, we draw our goals, our methodologies of thinking and often our perceptions of belonging. However, this process is not one-sided; it is rather built as a feedback loop. Culture brings societies to life and shapes human becoming, and, in return, we make it evolve by challenging its basic values and hierarchies. Scientific progress also embodies challenges and opportunities for culture: mass societies and their cultural industries, the development of the internet and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with which the notions of ancestry and territoriality loose meaning.