Defining digital culture
Gamimg, sampling, remixing, and messaging seem to be examples of practices that are often referred to in relation to the concept of digital culture. But it’s quite interesting how loosely we’ve started using this idea of digital culture. So Shift sets out 10 defining moments of digital culture (actually, I think they’re all contested), but that’s not important – it’s the assumption that we know what digital culture is in the first place. This piece on education and training seems to me to build on an inadequate model of what techno- or digital culture actually is. I’ve started to think of it as a set of practices clustered around the use of particular tools, and modes of communication and interaction. There’s also sets of values and underpinning mindsets at work. This is a link to the Institute of Multimedia Literacy at the University of Southern California – digital culture gets a mention alongside media, art, design and technology. ..interesting stuff, but definition remains problematic.