| Home | About | Subscribe | Search | Member Area |
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 397.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
Hosted by King's Digital Lab
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2019-11-12 14:37:02+00:00
From: Claire Clivaz
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.392: digitization vs digitalization
Dear colleagues,
Thank you so much for your five reactions to my question.
As we see, reactions are going from no difference or just a marketing
difference (Benjamin Vis and Jeffrey Savoye) to an elaborate thinking on
the point (Simon Tanner).
It is particularly interesting that Herbert Wender draws our attention
to two different uses of the same German word âDigitalisierungâ. I am
quite sure that such different uses can be also found in French: English
binomial expression helps us to discern in a more fine way what is at
stake behind one unique word in German and French, and surely in some
other languages.
I have been already attentive to the Oxford definition, pointed by Dino
Buzetti: it is indeed at the limit between tow different meanings or
not; but that's probably a quite exact image of the present situation. I
mean, we have two words that, like former monozygote twins, are going in
the direction of a growing up differentiation.
Last but not least, I am particularly grateful to Simon Tanner for
indicating that the debate will stand in his forthcoming book. It is the
reason for which I started the discussion here : when an idea or
discussion in Humanities arrives even in a single mind, one can be sure
that is it already present in the mind of somebody else. Humanities
ideas are like pebbles in the river.
Please note, dear Simon, that the 2016 published article by Brennen and
Kreiss is still different from their 2014 draft version. But beyond this
formal remark, as you can see it my video conference, and as you will
read it in my AIUCD paper, we agree on the general appreciation of both
terms (I am preparing also a French translation of this English paper).
The AIUCD 2020 call for papers was asking if we should come back from
digital humanities to humanities computing, to keep all Humanist
scholars together. I think that this double terminology will stay in our
common memory, as a very strong turning point. But rather to postulate a
come back to a previous step, I am rather inclined to consider that we
are going towards Humanities entirely digitized or digitalized, in a
similar way that one has stopped to speak about âdigital computerâ, when
it has become too obvious that our current computer was a digital object.
It is up to us to choose between Humanities digitized or digitalized, if
it is still time to choose. Really not sure about that.
Kind greetings,
Claire
On 12.11.19 09:17, Humanist wrote:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 392.
> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> [1] From: Jeffrey Savoye
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
(70)
>
> [2] From: Dr. Herbert Wender
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
(24)
>
> [3] From: Dino Buzzetti
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
(39)
>
> [4] From: Simon Tanner
> Subject: RE: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
(72)
>
> [5] From: Benjamin Vis
> Subject: RE: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
(15)
>
>
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-11 13:28:38+00:00
> From: Jeffrey Savoye
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
>
> I smell clever marketing at play. There may not be a distinction in
> current usage, but we shall see if they are successful in creating one.
> (If there is money or other forms of personal gain at stake, someone
> will at least attempt it.) English does have a lot of words with very
> close but slight nuances of special meaning.
>
> Jeffrey A. Savoye
> The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore
> https://www.eapoe.org
>
>
> On 11/11/2019 1:18 AM, Humanist wrote:
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 390.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>> www.dhhumanist.org
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2019-11-10 09:35:52+00:00
>> From: Claire Clivaz
>> Subject: Digitization VS Digitalization: is there any difference?
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> Since some months, I have been thinking about the distinction between
>> "digitization" and "digitalization", a difference that does not exist in
>> French for example.
>>
>> The word "digitalization" can often be found on Google in DH volumes,
>> but generally, it simply refers to this collected essay:
>>
>> Willard McCarty (ed.). 2010. /Text and Genre in Reconstruction: Effects
>> of Digitalization on Ideas, Behavious, Products and Institutions/.
>> Cambridge, OpenBook Publishers.
>>
>> However, "digitalization" is present only in the title of this book.
>> Willard kindly explained to me that it was the publisher wish to get it
>> in the title. Moreover, we have apparently only one article of
>> definition of both concepts (not in OA):
>>
>> J. Scott Brennen and Daniel Kreiss. 2016. Digitalization
>> (<)https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect111).
>> /International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy/ 23
>> October:1-11.
>>
>> As for me, I did a first lecture on this binomial expression in France
>> (Nice 2019), with the video here
>>
(<)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEWyrmGRkoA&list=PLwfNs3lhppctnSaZhAsFzjDZk
> N4KZ
>> rJUx&index=4&t=0s),
>> and I have a paper accepted on the topic at the AIUCD 2020. I am now
>> interested in raising the debate here: do you think that there is any
>> difference between these two English words? In DH in particular?
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Claire
>>
>>
>> --
>> Claire Clivaz
>> Head of DH+
>> SIB | Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
>> Amphipole 187 - Quartier Sorge, Dorigny - CH-1015 Lausanne
>> t +41 21 692 40 60
>> claire.clivaz@sib.swiss
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-11 11:47:37+00:00
> From: Dr. Herbert Wender
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
>
> Dear Claire,
>
> in Germany it seems quite clear that the one word "Digitalisierung" has two
> different meanings:
>
> a) the expansion of digital tools and media all over the subsystems of the
> modern society; as example, yesterday broadcasted:
> Digitalisierung der Landwirtschaft - Daten säen, Daten ernten
> https://www.deutschlandfunk.de ⺠digitalisierung-der-landwirtschaft-
daten-
> sa... vor 21 Stunden - ... Big Brother im Kuhstall Digitalisierung in der
> Landwirtschaft mit Nebenwirkungen. Präzision ...
> b) in contexts of preserving the cultural heritage, or preparing research
> objects in DH contexts:
> Digitalisierung - Das Museum der Zukunft (Archiv)
> https://www.deutschlandfunk.de digitalisierung-das-museum-der-zukunft.1...
> 20.11.2014 - Digitalisierung des kulturellen Erbes â Grenzenlose
Wissenswelten
> ... Allensbach-Studie Schule, Digitalisierung und die Arbeitswelt
>
> In my understanding of the english words "digitization" stands for the
> transformation of information from the analogue to the digital, while
Willard's
> publisher obviously with "digitalization" had in mind the a) meaning above.
>
> Best regards, Herbert
>
>
> --[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-11 11:00:07+00:00
> From: Dino Buzzetti
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
>
> It would be enough to refer to the Oxford English Dictionary respective
> entries:
>
> *digitization, n. *
> 1. The action or process of digitizing; the conversion of analogue data
> (esp. in later use images, video, and text) into digital form.
> 2. = digitalization n.2 2.
>
> *digitalization, n. (2)*
> 1. = digitization n. 1.
> 2. The adoption or increase in use of digital or computer technology by an
> organization, industry, country, etc.
>
> From which I gather that the two terms can be used interchangeably in their
> primary sense, i.e. "the process of digitizing", and that both of them have
> a secondary sense as well , i.e. "the adoption of digital technology by an
> organizion", so that they are interchangeable, in use, also in this secondary
> sense.
>
> To you the choice of insisting in assigning to them only distinct meanings.
>
> -dino buzzetti
>
>
> --
> Dino Buzzetti
> formerly
> Department of Philosophy
> University of Bologna
>
> currently
> Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII
> via san Vitale, 114
> I-40125 Bologna BO
> e-mail: dino.buzzetti [at] gmail.com
> buzzetti [at] fscire.it
> Web: http://web.dfc.unibo.it/buzzetti
> http://www.fscire.it/index.php/it/ricercatori/dino-buzzetti-2
>
>
> --[4]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-11 10:34:05+00:00
> From: Simon Tanner
> Subject: RE: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
>
> Hi,
>
> I have found the difference to be significant enough to seek to define it for
my
> current book and in the past it has been a source of confusion or conflation
> that has not been helpful. I make it very clear to our students in the Masters
> of Digital Humanities or the MA Digital Asset and Media Management that they
> should not use the interchangeably.
>
> So from my book I make the distinction in use:
>
> "Digitisation vs digitalisation
> This book refers to âdigitisationâ and rarely to its counterpart
> âdigitalisationâ. While closely associated, they are distinct terms that
should
> not be used interchangeably. This definition most clearly describes the
> distinctions:
> We define digitization as the material process of converting individual
analogue
> streams of information into digital bits. In contrast, we refer to
> digitalization as the way in which many domains of social life are
restructured
> around digital communication and media infrastructures. (Brennan and Kreiss,
> 2014)"
> Brennan, S. and Kreiss, D. (2014) Digitization and Digitalization, Culture
> Digitally. Available at: http://culturedigitally.org/2014/09/digitalization-
and-
> digitization/.
>
> Where I have found the main areas of interuse have been:
> - with German speakers where the use of the full word digital and addition of
> isation is just a natural way the German language seems to work. It seems to
> indicate a straight translation to English, not conflation.
> - with digital culture and media studies subject specialists who came to
> digitalisation first and thus think that covers everything such that they
don't
> distinguish but only use digitalisation and never digitisation. So there is an
> element of Derrida driven thinking that leads to conflation of the two giving
> one precedence.
>
> As someone who worked in digitisation since the mid-1990's it was from my
> library, museums, archives stance very much the dominant term and I only
> occasionally came across digitalisation (usually German speakers) until the
> mid-2000s - say 2004 onwards. As topics such a big data and the study of
social
> media became bigger topics of study then digitalisation came up very much more
> frequently and by now I would say became the dominant term and digitisation is
> the lesser used. I think this is sensible as digitisation is a very particular
> term for a specific process that is thus limited. Digitalisation is bigger in
> scope and coverage and thus will be used more frequently.
>
> You could thus say that for the DH community the rise of one term to take over
> from the other in frequency of use is indicative of the shift in focus of some
> of DH from getting lots of historic content available in research arenas such
> that humanists can do interesting things with them. There might be come
> interesting mapping that could be done to view the use of terms in DH
literature
> and the increase of one as the other plateaus and then decreases in its use to
> describe DH activity. Digitisation obviously links to big programmes such as
> Google Book digitisation, mass newspaper digitisation programmes, HATIITrust
etc
> etc and these have quieted in the last 5 years compared to other DH topics of
> interest that are in a period of significant growth.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Simon
>
> Book: Tanner, S. (2019) Pre-publication draft to be published in Delivering
> impact with digital resources: Planning strategy in the attention economy,
Facet
> Publishing, ISBN: 9781856049320.
>
> Simon Tanner
> Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage
> Department of Digital Humanities
> King's College London | S3.18 Strand Campus | London WC2R 2LS
>
> Pro Vice Dean (Impact & Innovation), Arts & Humanities
> Email: simon.tanner@kcl.ac.uk
> Research: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/simon.tanner.html
>
>
> --[5]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-11 09:50:14+00:00
> From: Benjamin Vis
> Subject: RE: [Humanist] 33.390: digitization vs digitalization
>
> Dear Claire,
>
> At the risk of coming across more pragmatic than critically reflective, when I
> arrived in Britain I was taught "digitalisation" is an error, and the correct
> term is "digitisation". In my mother tongue only the former form of the word
> exists, so I have never sought any further explanation. Certainly, in my
fields
> I'm not aware of both terms existing alongside each other nor having different
> meanings.
>
> Best,
>
> Benjamin
>
> || Dr Benjamin N. Vis | https://kent.academia.edu/BenjaminVis ||
> Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
--
Claire Clivaz
Head of DH+
SIB | Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
Amphipole 187 - Quartier Sorge, Dorigny â CH-1015 Lausanne
t +41 21 692 40 60
claire.clivaz@sib.swiss
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
Editor: Willard McCarty (King's College London, U.K.; Western Sydney University, Australia)
Software designer: Malgosia Askanas (Mind-Crafts)
This site is maintained under a service level agreement by King's Digital Lab.