Digital Information Culture: The Individual and Society in the Digital Age

Citation

Wallis, J. (2010), "Digital Information Culture: The Individual and Society in the Digital Age", Library Review, Vol. 59 No. 3, pp. 236-237. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531011031250

Tredinnick follows on from his previous Chandos publication, Digital Information Contexts: Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Digital Information, with this latest text in which he explores the evolving digital culture produced through the relationship between culture and technology. Tredinnick has an easy style to his writing; the concepts are complex yet his narrative is clear and accessible. He is as likely to make reference to The Matrix and pop culture as he is Foucault and postmodernism. Tredinnick explicitly states that his perspective throughout is that culture and knowledge are socially constructed, that we create meaning around technology, digital information forms and formats, and cultural change.

The text has overlapping potential audiences; students and scholars in media and communications, digital media, information science, cultural studies as well as those working in information management and digital media who have an interest in the broader impact and historical context of their work. The tone of the text is ideal for a wide audience; theory, concepts and ideas are presented with clarity and are effectively illustrated. The thematic structure of the text aids in this.

Tredinnick defines his terms through the first part of the book; exploring the meaning of culture, representations of technology (from cultural theory to cyberpunk literature) and the nature of narrative. These sections provide the foundations upon which Tredinnick builds through the text. The concept of narrative is of primary importance as it is the changing nature of narrative structures and the evolving meaning of the “text” upon which Tredinnick expands in the second part of the book. Along the way Tredinnick explores ideas around the authenticity and fixity of knowledge, the relationship between power and knowledge, notions of identity in digital space, and the ways in which cultural memory is represented, shaped and preserved.

Anyone who works with digital information, creating or shaping digital environments will find relevance and value in the exploration of these concepts. For this reviewer Tredinnick's text is the first to cover all the bases in exploring the pervasive cultural change that we have experienced through the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries. Tredinnick contextualises cultural change and digital technologies in a way that many authors writing on the same subject do not. His knowledge of transdisciplinary theory (across literary criticism, cultural studies, media and communications, information science) provides a holistic perspective on digital culture which offers real insight. Drawing on the legacy of literary criticism and cultural theory embeds Tredinnick's analysis in a broad historical context, which avoids the techno‐euphoria of many authors on digital technology. Read it.