New digital cultures: what’s at stake?
A French Manifesto for the Digital Humanities currently being proposed by Marin Dacos, Director Centre for open electronic publishing, Marseille (click on post title), is an initial stage in beginning to codify some of the emerging themes currently being discussed in the literature on digital cultures. The following five issues are the most prominent, I have decided to pose questions because these issues are still emerging and are in flux. 1. Online self : how does the ability to “construct” an online identity affect our view of ourselves? 2. Intellectual Property : should the Web be thought of in the frame of book culture or should we construct a new model? What would this look like? 3. Ethics : do acts of cyber-bullying and the video sharing of random acts of violence simply show how new tools can be exploited to amplify negative human desires? 4. Authorship : perhaps this is an issue most acutely relevant to education, what is the role of the “expert” in digital culture? How can