In a sense, the documents serve as a principle of organization for a whole nexus of social practices and roles, institutions, property relations and personal attitudes and emotions. This social and cultural dynamic is replicated in all sorts of other academic specialties, professions, businesses, and communities. It provides one means by which they constitute themselves as a subculture and sustain their identity. They overlap and transform, and, paradoxically, break down barriers of culture, form, time, and space while facilitating emphasis of differences. Perhaps nowhere does this become more apparent than in the international context.
Documents exist in social, cultural, and national settings.
Digital documents transmitted instantly across networks and electronic communications are breaking down barriers among and within these settings, raising global questions and issues that require international discourse for answers and resolution. For example, varying national or cultural attitudes towards pornography, freedom of access to information, or intellectual property rights raise questions as to whether it is even possible for any one country to enforce its own rules and laws in isolation. Or to what extent such laws may conflict with the practices and directions of transnational cultures, such as the scientific community. The answers are not self-evident. A good example might be the potential changes the use of interactive learning technologies might introduce to educational settings.