Nine difficulties to understand digital culture

Abstract

Digital arts and culture are certainly fashionable these days, and little by little, the Academia is also interested in them. The main aim of this paper is to give a brief description of nine obstacles which turn the subject of digital culture a very complex one from the theoretica lpoint of view. These obstacles are: the obsession to distinguish between the «is» and the «ought» of digital culture, which is quite problematic when one wants to study a cultural product; the confusion between culture and its source; the lack of historical perspective; the falacy of believing that ICT have inmutable characteristics; the technological complexities which new technologies add now to culture; the false inmediacy of some programs developed for artistic creation, which make the artist to forget the knowledge and discipline implicit in artistic creation; the lack academic resources and help; the non-existant theoretical models, and the lack of theoretical significance of posmodern approaches to this phenomenon under discussion.