Digitality (also known as digitalism [1] ) is used to mean the condition of living in a digital culture, derived from Nicholas Negroponte's book Being Digital [2] in analogy with modernity and post-modernity.
Digitality (also known as digitalism [1] ) is used to mean the condition of living in a digital culture, derived from Nicholas Negroponte's book Being Digital [2] in analogy with modernity and post-modernity.
Aspects of digitality include nearly continuous contact with other people through cell phones, [1] near instantaneous access to information through the World Wide Web, third wave information storage (where any fragment in a text can be searched and used for categorization, such as through search engine Google), and communicating through weblogs and email. [3]
Some of the negative aspects of digitality include computer viruses and spam. [4]
With the rapidly growing technology, children at increasingly younger ages are learning to speak through the cyber world rather than in face-to-face conversation. They are becoming more digitally literate and creating a new culture in which they communicate more efficiently online than they do in person. [5]
In the 1990s, literature on the effects of interactivity with information began to be written and published, particularly focused on the immediacy and ubiquity of digital communications, and the interactivity and participatory nature of digital media. [6] While traditionally in Postmodernism a decisive role for media in the formation of personality, culture and social order is presumed, [7] so that this emerged literature differed fundamentally from the analog critical theory, in that the audience now has the ability to do more than create a personal text through their idiolect, as they are able to create newly informed texts which reinforce the behavior of other participants. [8] Simply put, digital media made way for individuals to express themselves through online interaction and refine their skills in a communal effort.
Many works have been written outlining the fear of digitality. In the 1990s, the realization of digitality caused many artists to visualize and fear a future where analog would become completely extinct. They viewed digitalization as a deletion of the past. [9]
Although the computer was originally created to complete large scale computations, it ultimately progressed into a processing machine that could retrieve and interpret information very quickly. The first personal computer was first introduced by Ed Roberts in 1975 and this sparked the introduction of other "personal computers". [10] As technology continued to advance, more and more intelligent computers were coming to light with stronger processing power and wider range of utilities. This new age of technology lead to the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 which revolutionized the modern world. With the introduction of this World Wide Web people were able to more commonly access a data pool online with a trove of information. This information is now easily accessible from a Smartphone which can connect people from anywhere at any time.
Digital technology plays an important role in 21st century life. In the United States, nearly two-thirds of people own smartphones. [11] Using social networking services and online forums, people are able to communicate with other users, regardless of geographic region or time constraints. The rise of this type of interaction partly explains the significant increase in phone use in younger people, and mobile technology is mainly used for the purposes of communication. [12] Digitalism is also slowly replacing many forms of physical aids, such as print encyclopedias and dictionaries, with people turning to newer technology for various needs. [13] In his book, Nicholas Negroponte explains how necessities in the future will be digitized. For example, a large proportion of mass media (including newspapers and magazines) are becoming digitized, [14] and a large percentage of financial transactions made in the United States are being made without the physical exchange of money (e.g. online).
Computation is frequently discussed in debates on digitally. Modern theorists are now choosing to focus more on our relation to computers rather than the computers themselves as an important element of digitality. [15]
Social media are computer-generated tools that allow for people to convey their thoughts, ideas, or interests through digital communities or networks. Social media are online platforms for human interactions with local and global reach, designed to circulate information. These platforms support social interactions and give rise to a complex interplay between communication, social practices, and technological infrastructure. [16] This gives way to connection of all these components in real-time, so that through these connections people, information, data and events are instantly and globally spread. This allows for platforms like Twitter to be a media medium where there is an intersection of media and social interaction. [16]
Social media is different from social networks, but is commonly looked at as the same, which makes public differentiation harder.
Just like television and advertisements, social media has great potential for business and marketing opportunities where companies can formulate custom promotions geared for specific audiences.
Digitality in the 2000s has had a great impact on the world of education. The internet creates an abundance of easily accessible and globally diverse resources. [17] The digitization of textbooks and other written texts reduces the demand for the print versions. [18] A vast majority of books now come with a digital version of the text that allows for easier access from anywhere. This applies to scholarly textbooks, religious texts, books, and other texts that would normally have to be found in physical form. Digitalism has also made it so that children are now presented with electronic knowledge at a very early age, resulting in the increased implementation of electronics in school systems (for example in electronic learning, mobile learning, and blended learning). Students and academics alike have adopted social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogging platforms to expand the horizons for learning. [19]
Intercultural communication is an important part of globalization. In the past, intercultural communication was made difficult because of the distance separating different cultures. However, with modern-day technology and digitality, it is becoming increasingly possible to interact and learn about other cultures in an environment where people can openly speak. This interaction allows for people to compare and reflect upon both their own and different cultures.[ citation needed ] The internet creates platforms and forums where people from different backgrounds can develop intercultural communication skills and gain a cross-cultural abundance of knowledge. With the digitality of religious texts and cultural meetings, it is increasingly feasible to be submerged in a culture or religion without the need to travel to the source.
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as writing, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditional mass media, such as printed material or audio recordings, which features little to no interaction between users. Popular examples of multimedia include video podcasts, audio slideshows and animated videos. Multimedia also contains the principles and application of effective interactive communication such as the building blocks of software, hardware, and other technologies. The five main building blocks of multimedia are text, image, audio, video, and animation.
Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media platforms began as separate and mostly unrelated technologies, but have converged in many ways into an interrelated telecommunication, media, and technology industry.
Postdigital, in artistic practice, is an attitude that is more concerned with being human, than with being digital, similar to the concept of "undigital" introduced in 1995, where technology and society advances beyond digital limitations to achieve a totally fluid multimediated reality that is free from artefacts of digital computation.
Network society is the expression coined in 1991 related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. The intellectual origins of the idea can be traced back to the work of early social theorists such as Georg Simmel who analyzed the effect of modernization and industrial capitalism on complex patterns of affiliation, organization, production and experience.
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any human communication that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats, it has also been applied to other forms of text-based interaction such as text messaging. Research on CMC focuses largely on the social effects of different computer-supported communication technologies. Many recent studies involve Internet-based social networking supported by social software.
New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms.
Internet culture is a quasi-underground culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet who primarily communicate with one another online as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and information communication technology, specifically the Internet.
Being Digital is a non-fiction book about digital technologies and their possible future by technology author, Nicholas Negroponte. It was originally published in January 1995 by Alfred A. Knopf.
Digital rhetoric can be generally defined as communication that exists in the digital sphere. As such, digital rhetoric can be expressed in many different forms, including text, images, videos, and software. Due to the increasingly mediated nature of our contemporary society, there are no longer clear distinctions between digital and non-digital environments. This has expanded the scope of digital rhetoric to account for the increased fluidity with which humans interact with technology.
Online ethnography is an online research method that adapts ethnographic methods to the study of the communities and cultures created through computer-mediated social interaction. As modifications of the term ethnography, cyber-ethnography, online ethnography and virtual ethnography designate particular variations regarding the conduct of online fieldwork that adapts ethnographic methodology. There is no canonical approach to cyber-ethnography that prescribes how ethnography is adapted to the online setting. Instead individual researchers are left to specify their own adaptations. Netnography is another form of online ethnography or cyber-ethnography with more specific sets of guidelines and rules, and a common multidisciplinary base of literature and scholars. This article is not about a particular neologism, but the general application of ethnographic methods to online fieldwork as practiced by anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars.
Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a pedagogical approach wherein learning takes place via social interaction using a computer or through the Internet. This kind of learning is characterized by the sharing and construction of knowledge among participants using technology as their primary means of communication or as a common resource. CSCL can be implemented in online and classroom learning environments and can take place synchronously or asynchronously.
Digital literacy is an individual's ability to find, evaluate, and communicate information using typing or digital media platforms. It is a combination of both technical and cognitive abilities in using information and communication technologies to create, evaluate, and share information.
The knowledge divide is the gap between those who can find, create, manage, process, and disseminate information or knowledge, and those who are impaired in this process. According to a 2005 UNESCO World Report, the rise in the 21st century of a global information society has resulted in the emergence of knowledge as a valuable resource, increasingly determining who has access to power and profit. The rapid dissemination of information on a potentially global scale as a result of new information media and the globally uneven ability to assimilate knowledge and information has resulted in potentially expanding gaps in knowledge between individuals and nations. The digital divide is an extension of the knowledge divide, dividing people who have access to the internet and those who do not. The knowledge divide also represents the inequalities of knowledge among different identities, including but not limited to race, economic status, and gender.
Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.
Global village describes the phenomenon of the entire world becoming more interconnected as the result of the propagation of media technologies throughout the world. The term was coined by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). Literary scholar Sue-Im Lee describes how the term global village has come to designate “the dominant term for expressing a global coexistence altered by transnational commerce, migration, and culture”. Economic journalist Thomas Friedman's definition of the global village as a world “tied together into a single globalized marketplace and village” is another contemporary understanding of the term.
The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological or social psychological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media as part of everyday life, and how these various technologies contribute to patterns of human behavior, social relationships, and concepts of the self. Sociologists are concerned with the social implications of the technology; new social networks, virtual communities and ways of interaction that have arisen, as well as issues related to cyber crime.
Intercultural communicative competence in computer-supported collaborative learning, is the application of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), to provide intercultural communicative competence (ICC) to its users.
Mediated communication or mediated interaction refers to communication carried out by the use of information communication technology and can be contrasted to face-to-face communication. While nowadays the technology we use is often related to computers, giving rise to the popular term computer-mediated communication, mediated technology need not be computerized as writing a letter using a pen and a piece of paper is also using mediated communication. Thus, Davis defines mediated communication as the use of any technical medium for transmission across time and space.
Virtual exchange is an instructional approach or practice for language learning. It broadly refers to the "notion of 'connecting' language learners in pedagogically structured interaction and collaboration" through computer-mediated communication for the purpose of improving their language skills, intercultural communicative competence, and digital literacies. Although it proliferated with the advance of the internet and web 2.0 technologies in the 1990s, its roots can be traced to learning networks pioneered by Célestin Freinet in 1920s and, according to Dooly, even earlier in Jardine's work with collaborative writing at the University of Glasgow at the end of the 17th to the early 18th century.
Digital Media in education is measured by a person's ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce media content and communication in a variety of forms. These media may involve incorporating multiple digital softwares, devices, and platforms as a tool for learning. The use of digital media in education is growing rapidly in today's age, competing with books for the leading form of communication. This form of education is slowly combating the traditional forms of education that have been around for a long time. With the introduction of virtual education, there has been a need for more incorporation of new digital platforms in online classrooms.
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