Digital Culture versus Change

摘要

The study of digital culture is a multi-disciplinary field that spans many different methodologies, frameworks and philosophies that explore the relationship between culture and technology. The following is a discourse in digital culture research using the philosophy of scientific revolution (Thomas S. Kuhn) as a key source for understanding the current state of the emerging field. Electronic technology that developed out of the 20th century enabled the cultural prevalence of mass media, in the form of cinema and television and later digital media which provides cultural researchers and philosophers complex new frontiers to explore. Marshall McLuhan in The Gutenberg Galaxy1 and Martin Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology discuss the idea of media and technology as an extension of mankind that creates new capacity and influence, both intended and unintended, and have sought to understand them in a cultural as well as philosophical context. A core philosophical problem of technology is that, much as language transforms the world, so do the extensions of man, resulting in a change of meaning. Ernst Cassirer saw technology as an attempt at making sense of the world through symbolism and creating meaning through spontaneous action. In the digital context, this changing of meaning is profound and reaches far into everyday life from the creation of online communities to digital identities that function as citizens of the global village, effectively changing the way we identity with ourselves and the world around us. As McLuhan predicted, the digital age has brought about electronic interdependence and a change in cognitive and social organization including the transformation of media structures, modes of communication and identity narratives. It is in this background that the discourse below will anchor its arguments on as the concept of digital culture evolves.