* This text is an elaboration of the Wallachia eHUB digitization ambassador acceptance speech I delivered on 26 June 2024.
As you might have thought, digitalization has to do with digits, as is evident in formulations such as “digital examination” or “digital dexterity”. In cybernetics and increasingly in common parlance, digitalization refers to what is or can be represented in the form of especially binary digits – because we start by counting on our fingers, and in Latin one of the elements that together form a numbering system was called digitus.
Digital does not mean electronic. It goes deeper than that. It means converting a continuous medium, a sound or an image, into a discrete medium, a note or a pixel. And this is the description of perception itself, plus categorization – it is the process by which we cut up the continuum of existence into distinct and opposable entities that we can memorize, process, compress, manipulate, and transmit to others.
In this sense, digitalization accompanies, if not defines, civilization itself. Music theory and notation are an example; likewise, the mechanical clock and on/off valve hydraulic systems or learning a foreign language – with the segmentation of the sound stream into phrases and words that we memorize, reproduce, translate. Most grammars, in fact, are just that, with parts of speech, syllables, sounds, phonemes and so on. History, geology, astronomy, zoology, sports and politics are digital activities, in this extended sense, to the degree that they use taxonomies, binomial nomenclature systems, parties, teams and competitions. All the basic concepts we use are binary, oppositional and are understood by most of us as completely describing reality: day/night, man/woman, adult/child, full/full, up/down, etc.
Digital twins. Digital worlds
Digitalization, in the sense of converting a continuous medium into a set of discrete units, is a permanence of civilization. What is different is the hitherto unimaginable ability to order matter in such a way that we can digitize almost everything. Starting some 70 years ago and accelerating year by year, electronic digitization and digital transformation have changed the world we live in. Based on scientific theories that have been able to assign numbers to objects and phenomena, we now have the technologies that allow us to convert almost anything into series of 0’s and 1’s. A computer can “read” a bill and pass it on. We can store an image or a song, enhance it by reducing noise or filling it with images and sounds that we have generated from series of 0’s and 1’s. We can scan a screw or a statue, compress the file as needed and email it anywhere we want, or (re)produce the object using a 3D printer.
To digital and back
Today we are talking about digital twins that duplicate aspects of reality (a whole refinery) and virtual worlds that augment the real world or dispense with it almost entirely. There are influencers (and their followers) who manifest themselves almost exclusively online, creators of digital content on the basis of and through which they derive the resources they need to make a living – some of them, very effectively! Digital tools matter, they have become indispensable, because through them we monitor and control the real world.
As already suggested, digitalization is only one side of the coin. The other is analog conversion, the process by which we bring the output and lessons of the digital environment – sometimes just a decision – back into the real world. Which is this? It is the world in which we suffer and die. Even worse, it is the world in which those we love suffer and die. We have a moral duty to come back from the digital world stronger, better equipped with the understanding offered by big data analytics and the speed of reaction that electronic automation, digitization and artificial intelligence allow. What ultimately matters is to influence the real world to reduce suffering and sustain life. It is a noble duty that I undertake as an ambassador for digitalization. I am honored and thank you for this opportunity!
