I've always had this problem sitting through art history courses talking about contemporary art: if you want to see it as the new art that it is, stop defining it by old art and old practices. He's say our outdated understanding of art is what prevents us from seeing digital art as art, then continues to do so himself by writing about it in those terms!

This statement... jesus, so much bias! "So far, though, the contents of mainstream ‘culture’ – the art, design, music and film that are the usual stock in trade of the Barbican Centre in London, the Lincoln Center in New York, or the Sydney Opera House – are remarkably unaffected by the digital revolution taking place in our daily lives."

First off, mainstream culture still counts as culture and stop being pretentious by putting in quotes like it doesn't because it's not necessarily what is called "high culture". Second - are you kidding, Tom? Have you been in a coma for the past 2 or 3 decades and not witnessed the significant change in music, art, film? We have electronic music when not so long we didn't even have the capacity to record multi-tracks, and films have gone from using film to relying heavily on CG. 3D is a completely new field and it is regarded as art, and so is digital painting and photo manipulation. He still seems to be suck at the point of history where photography was questioned as an art form, and A LOT has changed since then. Maybe his definition of digital art is too closed.

Digital art is "data" and "algorithms" - yeah no shit... CG is algorithms, electronic music is algorithms, even digital painting is what it is because the program's algorithms give it a distinct look. To say that digital art is there to be artistically innovative... well... that's always been one of the roles of any art form. To be culturally relevant and represent the time period it's made in? Yeah that's not new or exclusive to digital art. Textbook.

The traditional qualifiers for art are galleries, art shows, and experts placing value on a work...With how quickly everything is changing, I think the world is moving beyond this and this is what art is having difficulty with. A system that worked doesn't work anymore. Digital art is definitely appreciated and regarded as art, but not under the textbook terms.