Untitled: Emerging Cultural Forms in the Digital Age

Blythe, M., Light, A. and O'Neill, S. (2007) Untitled: Emerging Cultural Forms in the Digital Age, editors' commentary for Culture, Creativity and Technology special issue of Human Technology

http://www.humantechnology.jyu.fi/archives/february07.html

The age of mechanical reproduction had profound effects on the creation, distribution, and perception of art and other cultural forms (Benjamin, 1992). As the age of digital reproduction progresses, change is becoming equally, if not more, radical. The speed and scale of technological development presents a series of complex challenges for research. This has become evident in human-computer interaction (HCI), a field of study that emerged from “man–machine studies” (Dix, Finlay, Abowd, & Beale, 1998). As well as acknowledging the existence of women, the new title reflected the shift from the mechanical to the digital age; but, in the last 5 years, there have been such major changes in the study of HCI that this title now seems dated. When computers were largely confined to the workplace, it was clear that interacting with them was a specialized activity that necessitated study. Computing technology is now a part of the way we cook, clean, work, communicate, and play; it is, as the title of this journal declares, a human technology. HCI as a title seems at once too narrow and too broad. It includes interaction with microwaves, dishwashers, and credit cards but also the creation of image, music, and text. Emerging technologies offer new possibilities for the creation and delivery of artworks, new modes of operation within artistic communities, alternatives to the traditional view of galleries, and new means of appreciating older cultural forms.