Digital vs. digitalised
Although not initially intended, downloading Spotify has made me think about Sterne (2006) and question whether there is a difference between the digital and digitalised.
Whilst listening to the recent ‘most popular’ tracks on Spotify, there is vast array of (or arguably all) tracks which feature ‘digitalised elements’, whereby a song has been recorded (which for the purpose of this initially, does not count as digital!) and then digitally manipulated to create a new sound. These are usually quite distinct from those which have been nurtured from a digital birth – Kraftwerk or Electro Swing for example vs. errrm… Britney Spears though even this is likely to have been born digital… maybe earlier Britney numbers!
[Strangely, the process of reflection has shown even a linguistic distinction can be more of a spectrum in reality...]
The point I was hoping to make initially was surrounding the differences – listening to the top 40, everything became a samey blur of similar sound, with little personality, e.g. generic club music, whereas other such as those highlighted above have a distinct personality. Digitalised suggests a manipulation from an original analogue/non-digital source, whereas digital is digital. Simple.
Thinking back to many of the other readings, these refer to a digital culture rather than a digitalised culture. A digitalised culture would suggest digital intervention (welcomed or not) and digital suggests either a born digital identity or emergent transition into the digital. The process of finding examples of modern-day digitalised songs may in itself support the notion of transition, whereby now we are surrounded by the simply digital.
Amy – audio recordings have always been ‘processed’ in some form or other to store them on a medium (wax cylinder, for example) and replay them at a later date. I don’t see digital processing as being different in kind from these. All forms of audio processing change the nature of the original sound (in terms of frequency range and harmonics, for example).
I would suggest that you reflect on the relevance of your thesis to e-learning and the expectations of learners – does this distinction really make any difference to the process of learning?
Hey Walt – I completely agree and the arbitrariness of the distinction is precisely that. Often people get hung up on what is or is not ‘digital’ often as a defence mechanism to the unknown, when you can look at any entity in our world and at least indirectly link it to the digital (touched on a little in later posts) – a spectrum of digitalness! Yet the fixation very often makes us lose sight of what is important for the learning experience, which will differ between subjects, individual learning styles, etc. It is a very muddied picture with on one hand schools throwing as many computers into classrooms and hoping they’ll make a difference whilst simultaneously battling against the technologically augmented spell-check generation habits! Technology to supplement not substitute but only where relevant and only if you make a ‘digital’ distinction of your tool set.
Whilst I take the point about the nature of audio recordings, I think thinking about the difference between digital and digitalised is valuable when thinking about how we use technology. It seems to me it’s a vital distinction.
Amy’s comment that people lose sight of what’s important in the learning process struck a chord with me. A few years back, my classroom was fitted with an smart board. My argument that it should go on a different wall so I could keep my huge rolling white board was ignored on the grounds it was more interactive, and would so better student learning. Yet this only applied to watching it. It only had one interactive pen. Whereas i could have 5+ students up with pens doing group and whole class work on the rolling board, and still use it with the projector for the laptop. No one looked to see what we already had, and how to enhance and build on that. They only looked at substitution. They certainly weren’t prepared to even consider using flexible teaching space to use both options. The technology had to be the best way. It seems to me that this is short sighted, and very much limits the tool set, digital or otherwise, as a narrow approach limits the tool set available.
Hello Amy,
what was the tool you used to create this wonderfull video Learning to Listen with. I just loved the intensity and simplicity of the design….
Best regards
Dirk
Hi Dirk! I used Camtasia to make it and Freesound for the audio files – I’m glad you liked it! Are you considering your digital artefact creation for the EDC MOOC?