Digitization

According to Margaret Rouse, digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. Text, audio and images can all be uploaded digitally. An example of digitization is scanning a physical copy of your essay, that way you now have access to your resume online. “The Electronic World: Literacy Study and Revolution” suggests that digitalization created radical changes to the world (Lanham). Digitalization has made programs widely available and perhaps most importantly cheap. Lanham expresses how these technological advancements including digitalization have revolutionized communication and self-expression. These instant communications have allowed individuals to save time and make money.

For example, companies no longer have to pay for expensive television commercials and billboards. With today’s technology they can create their own websites, videos or apps that can be shared instantly to millions of consumers. The time consuming option of a black and white printed advertisement in a newspaper is a thing of the past. Technology has evolved an abundance of platforms to allow creativity when creating any digitized communication (O’Brien). Digital text is dynamic, interactive and able to mix words with image and sound. Digitalization has significantly impacted education. It has allowed educators access to sources to better educate their students. We have advanced from projectors to computers where we can now access information by the click of a mouse thanks to digitalization. Schools now offer online classes with online exams and online textbooks (Ainslee). This is digitalization!

Digitalization makes information easier to preserve and share with the world. For example, a historical document such as the Declaration of Independence is physically located in the National Archives museum. Thanks to digitalization people are able to view this historical document all around the world without ever physically going to Washington D.C. (Rouse). Digitalization is not simply taking physical objects and converting them into digital. It is a complex process attendant upon the creation, use, management, accessibility and preservation of digital work (Hanssson). This process is so complex that mistakes do happen. According to Manovich, digitization naturally involves the loss of information.

An example of a loss of information due to digitalization is a study of digital photographs conducted by William Mitchell. It was determined that a standard photograph allows for enlargements, while a digital image has spatial limitations, which only allow a fixed amount of information to be observed (Manovich 30). More often than not, a digital image only contains a fixed amount of information since they often consist of a finite number of pixels that contains a distinct color or tonal value and this is what encompasses the image full reproduction. Nonetheless, an image that is transmitted and copied various times from the original tends to lose its information and its quality later becomes degraded causing the viewer a loss of interest. It is also important to keep in mind that digitization helps keep the memory of the past given that no information is truly deleted online. Given that we are so dependent on technology, a new era where we live to use technology, we are straying away from the “physical” world. From the way we communicate, and online shop, digitization is a bridge between the physical and the online world.

Ainslee, J., 2020. Digitization Of Education In The 21St Century - Elearning Industry. [online] eLearning Industry. Available at: [Accessed 18 October 2020].

Hansson, Joasim. 2010. Digitalization: Libraries, identity and change. ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/digitization

Lanham, Richard. “The_Electronic_Word_Democracy,_Technology,_and_the..._---- _(1._The_Electronic_Word_Literary_Study_and_the_Digital_Revolution).Pdf.” Google Drive, Google, drive.google.com/file/d/18vCNSfFX0lFIQ6Oqcik-BVd9CGivIX4-/view.

O’Brien, Sam. “4 Ways Technology Has Revolutionized Communication”. Business 2 Community, 2020. https://www.business2community.com/communications/4-ways-technology-has-revolutionizedcommunication-02348837.

Rouse, Margaret. “What Is Digitalization.” TechTarget Network, Google, www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS856US864%2Cdigitization

Manovich, Lev. “Manovich-Lev_The_Language_of_the_New_Media.Pdf.” Google Drive, The MIT Press, 2001, drive.google.com/file/d/1SDud2S7nK6fM2lbGeomZDheiFtpMZs27/view.