ABSTRACT
This chapter looks in more depth at how digital technology has been theorised in the Higher Education literature and in policy discourses. It begins by exploring and critiquing the ways in which digital technologies are described in Higher Education and the various ideas that have become associated with them. The chapter examines Friedrich Kittler's analysis of the effects of changes in media over the centuries, disputing his claims concerning what he sees as absolute ruptures caused by technological change. It argues for an analysis which retains the notion of continuities and combinations of prior and new technologies. The chapter proposes that analogue practice is still central to media system, which has evolved over the centuries and continues to change in combination with the digital. It argues for a more nuanced viewpoint which seeks to question what Jurgensen calls 'digital dualism' – the tendency to posit the analogue and the digital as a clearly observable binary.
