Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity

Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity

Web archiving

Hand investigates political and economic power, digital technologies, and culture. Although he does not cite digitization as a cause of decentering economies or other cultural changes he does acknowledge broad trends related to digitization. One of the trends discussed is the increasing invisibility of the “infrastructure of contemporary digital culture.” Networks of information, in order to maintain speed and efficiency, conform to a logic that “atomizes the subject.” Hand explores the effects of digitization, including the logic of speed, as they pertain to access, interactivity, and authenticity. Access and interactivity address the fragmentation and customization of both digital technologies and societies, implying a decentralization of power and the illusion of greater choice. Authenticity illuminates contemporary society’s transition from predominantly analog to digital technologies and the subsequent replacement of notions of the “real” and “hyper real.” Participation in Web 2.0 platforms is illusory and belies the underlying commodification of information and inauthentic claims of democracy.

The significance of Hand’s text for building and assessing digital archives is found in his discussion of authenticity and the challenges experienced by public archives in their attempts to balance demands for access with conflicting standards and principles of provenance and intellectual property rights.

Hand, Martin

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

2008

Polk, Victoria

Ashgate Publishing

E-Book

ISBN: 978-0-7546-4840-6

Hand, Martin. Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity.Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, 2008.