Tag Archive for 'digital literacy'

Marcus Westbury on why the Australia Council doesn’t get digital culture

Published
by
Ben Eltham
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Culture, Howardia and Media
. 30 Comments
A screenshot of Escape From Woomera, taken from the Wikipedia page about the game. A common industry rumour has it that the funding of the game by the Australia Council's New Media Arts Board eventually led to the abolition of that Board in an internal restructure.

Above: Escape From Woomera, screenshot.

Marcus Westbury’s column for The Age has been exploring some really interesting topics in cultural policy. His most recent column is one of his best. Now posted on his blog, the article examines the relative responses of the ABC  and the Australia Council to the disruptive cultural transformations wrought by digital technologies.

Westbury argues that while the ABC has done surprisingly well, “the “Australia Council has retreated further and further away from engagement in contemporary culture. The results are on the board to see.” More over the fold.

Continue reading ‘Marcus Westbury on why the Australia Council doesn’t get digital culture’

Did Facebook kill the blogging star?

Published
by
Mark
6 months, 3 weeks ago
in Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Education, Language, Media, Sociology and The Web
. 22 Comments

On Line Opinion has been featuring pieces on the internet and everyday life throughout August. My contribution, published today, examines some questions about the social and cultural implications of new media technologies, and in the process, busts some myths about ‘Digital Natives’ and cyber-utopianism. I think it’s important to have a realistic grasp of the actual cultural uses of social media in order to avoid the important questions which do arise collapsing into silly and dichotomised arguments about how the intertubes will either save the world or destroy all good things. The reach of the social web has now become pervasive enough that we’re in a position to assess where we are, and to debunk some of the more hyperbolised claims on both sides of the non-debate we have all too often about the web and social life.

I’ll have more to say about this soon, as this OLO piece is a spinoff from my talk for the Queensland Writers Centre on the Digital Age and the future of writing. I’m working that up in longer form for publication.