We Have Never Been Digital (2018)
article⁄We Have Never Been Digital (2018)
abstract⁄The recent debate about the nature of the ‘postdigital’ prompts the question as to whether we have ever been digital. This article looks at Bruno Latour’s book We Have Never Been Modern 1993 and questions whether its logic could not also be transferred to the realm of the digital. The issue is not so much that much of what is called ‘digital’ in fact refers to analog processes that are simply controlled by the digital. Nor is it simply that we are often not aware of what has been ‘digitally’ produced. Rather, the issue is that many of our operations within the digital realm are still controlled by the designer and do not operate within an autonomous realm. The notion of a purely objective digital operation without any subjective intervention on the part of the designer is something of a myth. The paper concludes that we have never been digital, just as we have never been modern. As such, we might argue that the term ‘postdigital’ makes little sense, in that we have never been digital in the first place.
|
|
| Year |
2018 |
| Authors |
Leach, Neil. |
| Issue |
ACADIA 2018: Recalibration. On imprecisionand infidelity. |
| Pages |
20-29 |
| Library link |
N/A |
| Entry filename |
we-have-never-been-digital |
