Conclusion

Debates concerning digital cultures suggest that new technologies are providing both benefits and risks to users. For example, as can be seen in this volume, the Internet is offering instant access to information and creating new forms of communication and community. There are clearly powerful opportunities here for self-expression, creativity and learning. However, a celebratory approach to the affordances of the Internet needs to be balanced with an examination of the power dynamics inherent in people’s use of the Internet. Not least is the issue of access, where although many people might have some kind of access to the Internet, the quality of the access (e.g., bandwidth, constant access versus access through schools or libraries), the social resources required to make the most of access and the economic resources needed to maintain access vary enormously. Furthermore, the benefits of Internet access also bring new risks concerning complex issues such as trust, credibility, privacy and commercialism, as recent reports about the growing incidence of criminal activity and pornography in the virtual world, Second Life, exemplify (Wade, 2007). The aim of this book has been to suggest ways that notions of play and creativity might inform our analyses of digital cultures, to provide examples of such analyses and to engage with continuing debates about people’s participation within digital cultures. The processes involved in participating in digital cultures are complex, and one of the challenges facing researchers in this area is to develop frameworks for analyses, as the authors in this volume have done, which reflect some of these complicated interactions.