Culture First!

by Walter Homolka

As the 'digital code' begins to penetrate the whole of our social fabric, we are increasingly conscious of living in a new era whose scale, dimensions and implications we do not fully comprehend. 'Interactivity', 'virtual reality' and 'global communications' are some of the most obvious dimensions of this new reality. Its implications include new cross-media acquisitions and mergers by players like Murdoch, Viacom and Disney and major questions about the future of printed word and reading. This book does not attempt to offer a broad survey of the new 'digital age' in all its aspects. Instead, it restricts its questions to cultural standards and the issue of quality in media, to questions with an unavoidably normative content. Culture First! challenges two fashionable arguments in cultural studies and media studies: that, in the modern 'digital age' of reproduction and simulation, technological change has made traditional conceptions of standards and quality in media obsolescent; that w