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be some long established, some recent, which are not based on “Orientalist" discourses. The time has come to free
ourselves from simplistic geographical hand-me-downs that perpetuate various forms of exoticism.

A good example of how deep this tendency reaches is the common use of terms such as “trance” throughout most of the
Westernized world (notably including Eastern Europe) to describe certain new phenomena--types of techno music, rave
cultures, and/or computer-generated animations. One sees not this term but this kind of gesture throughout much wider
circles like cultural studies and leftists thinking. Now, the interrelations between Europe--again, certainly including
Eastern Europe-and East Asia have a history that is long and varied, so this kind of linguistic appropriation doesn't take
place in a vacuum. In fact, this history is complex enough to cast doubt even on the use of terms like "East Asia* or “Asia
Pacific" in this context, because these relations have involved hegemonic competitions between nation-state formations in
these regions.

| would like to suggest the term “inter-East," which conveys this broader awareness. In my view, the term includes not just
"Asia" or the “Pacific regions" but also East and South Asia and even Eastern Europe. In the present context--that is, dis-
cussions on Tactical and Independent media and spaces--such an awareness is important. Unlike earlier terminology, it
can refer both to the past relations but also the future ones as well.

Another interesting term might be “cyberdiaspora" or “digital diaspora"--not in the sense of human lives or bodies “disap-
pearing” into or onto the net. Rather, | mean a diaspora through the net--within it, across it, by means of it. Historically
speaking, diaspora cultures have travelled around the world; these travels were accompanied by--and not always from or
to the same places--material circulations cultural circulations: ideas, lifestyles, food, art, music, and so on. Some theo-
reticians of this subject have used terms that sound very familiar to us in a “digital” or "cyber" context, for example, Paul
Gilroy's idea of the “diaspora web.”

Now, though, this kind of terminology is no longer a metaphor; rather, it is a sort of an allegory of reality itself. The rise of
network technologies have presented us with "cyberspaces,” and not merely through the use of computers radio and tele-
phones, for example, have brought about kinds of “spaces” that alter the spaces we live in, in ways similar or analogous
to the sea. My intent isn't to emphasise the power of the Internet; rather, | simply want to point out that there are refugee
and diaspora groups that maintain cohesion and communication--culture--by means of video distribution, computer net-
works, and other electronic technologies. For example, there are the Croatian and Macednian communities in Perth,
Australia, who rely heavily on videos to maintain connections to their origins; or the independent media in Amsterdam in
support of people coming from former Yugoslavia. There's no question that information technologies and telecomunica-
tions have allowed diasporas to develop in new direction.

Of course, diaspora strictly speaking almost invariably involves migrations imposed by power relations, whether econom-
ic, political, religious, and so on. But there are also looser though no less real aspects of diasporas--dreadlocks, T-shirts,
music, and so on--which we might refer to as “cultural diasporas,” or at least think about these phenomena in those terms.
Certainly, diaspora always means a sort of cultural travelling; but we should take care not to confuse these transmissions,
disseminations, and circulations with the effects of globalization or with a generic "postmodern" pastiche-eclecticism
based on an “anything goes" aesthetic. The boundary isn't a clear one, and it’s becoming even less so: there are no easy
way to distinguish between real refugees, illegal migrants, asylum-seekers, “suffering diasporas,” and rave or “hooligan”
travelers, various forms of tourism, and “cultural diasporas,” between forced settlement and voluntary migrations.

To return to my initial remarks, terms such as "Pacific Asia,” “Pacific rim," and “Asia” in general are especially significant
for the purposes of thinking about “cyberdiaspora culture." These areas have long and rich histories of displacements,
refugees, and diasporas. This, in part, accounts for the influence that Asian--or perhaps Inter-Asian cultures have on the
imagination and the actuality of cultural diaspora through electronic technology and cyberspace. For example, musical
styles such as "Bangra” and "Ragamuffin" as elaborated by blacks in the UK are connected to East Asian cultures, as is the
so-called "psychedelic trance" style of techno music, born in Goa, India. These newer diffusions are hypermodernized
“tribal” cultures--I use that word cautiously--in an effort to grasp “Oriental phenomena in the information age. In film and
animation, too--for example, Japanese Anime--Pacific Asian landscapes and cultural elements play an important and
sometimes subtle role. But is is important to recognise that even the “originary" material being “appropriated” isn't single