Introduction: Caribbean Cyberculture in the Age of the Machines

Abstract

Caribbean culture, as we knew it traditionally, died in the decade of the 1990s. In the late twentieth century, the rise of the machines signaled the progression of a new set of relations within cultural, social, and economic activity. In the Caribbean, there is the tendency among some people, especially of the older generation, to use the term “machine” in reference to any form of leading-edge gadget or technology. My employment of the term draws from that source, but it also echoes the use of the term in western pop culture, in blockbuster film, as in the Schwarzenegger movie, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. But coterminous with the death of our traditional experiences with the world around us there was a rebirth of our cultural encounters. Caribbean culture has always had to adapt to the rapid changes taking place within the region, but also in the wider global context. Just before the decade of the 1990s the impending rise of the machines signaled the proliferation of robust digital apparatuses. This anticipated new ways of producing culture, for example, new ways of creating songs, videos, movies and new ways of participating in the global information matrix by way of communication devices like personal computers and mobile phones. Of course, in the 1980s digital technology and advanced research in communication and information systems paved the way for many post—twentieth century innovations.