The conference theme:
Cultural collisions and creative interferences in the global village

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) networks, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web, offer tantalising possibilities of global communications. If such communications facilitate dialogues which both cross and preserve irreducible cultural and political boundaries, they may contribute immeasurably to greater global understanding and democratisation.
 

But diverse cultural attitudes towards technology and communication also issue in culturally distinctive ways of implementing and using CMC technologies. Some of these culturally-grounded differences in implementation and use frustrate, rather than facilitate, hopes for greater global communication.

This biennial conference series aims to provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of cutting-edge research on how diverse cultural attitudes shape the implementation and use of information communication technologies. The conference series brings together scholars from around the globe who provide diverse perspectives, both in terms of the specific culture(s) they highlight in their presentations and discussions, and in terms of the discipline(s) through which they approach the conference theme.

The first conference in the series was held in London in 1998 (see Charles Ess' overview of the themes and presentations, and the papers of CATaC'98).