Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity and Authenticity. Martin Hand. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2008. 198 pp.
In Making Digital Cultures, Canadian Martin Hand examines the shifts from analog to digital cultures by engaging with the messiness of everyday practice in the organizational context instead of simply highlighting the positive and negative impacts of digitization on people’s lives. Tellingly, he draws attention to the dramatic rise in the use of paper, books, telephone, and other material despite the impact of digitization in most areas of everyday life.
The first two chapters build the theoretical foundation for the empirical analysis of institutional practices that follows, exploring and evaluating the dominant narratives of digital cultures. The theoretical analysis intends to update the reader on developments and debates in the field, although the conceptual framework needs further explication.