Building access: mass digitisation and the politics of infrastructure

Today, all of us with internet connections can access millions of digitised cultural artefacts from the comfort of our desks. Institutions and individuals add thousands of new cultural works to the digital sphere every day, creating new central nexuses of knowledge. How does this affect us politically and culturally? In this keynote address, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup approaches mass digitisation critically as an emerging sociopolitical and sociotechnical phenomenon, offering a new understanding of a defining concept of our time. Framing mass digitization as a ccritical question of infrastructure, Thylstrup complicates mass digitisation’s simplistic promise of “access”, outlining instead its complex and messy political landscapes and what new ethical, cultural and political questions they give rise to.

This lecture and reception is organised by the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, part of the Institute of Advanced Studies, and is generously supported by the UCL Grand Challenges for Cultural Understanding and the UCL Centre for Critical Heritage Studies.