Post-Digital

What is Post Digital?

This is a first move towards trying to shift our thinking away from the simple digital/analogue distinction of technology towards a less divisive and more nuanced context for work; a human context that focuses on the essence of our work rather than the appearance. Preparing for the postdigital era

The "Post" prefix definition quoted by Colin Crouch in Post-Democracy implies using the achievements of the base term, in this case digital, but departing from it in it search of new possibilities.

In this way "A post-industrial society is not a non-industrial one. It continues to make and to use the products of industry, but the energy and innovative drive of the system have gone elsewhere. ... A post-democratic society therefore is one that continues to have and to use all the institutions of democracy, but in which they increasingly become a formal shell."

Post-Digital is not anti or pre digital - it is not absence of the digital - as it continues to make and to use the products of the digital age, but the energy and innovative drive of the system have gone elsewhere.

Mark Childs mentions the term “disappearing into use” that was used at the time.

Comments

Tim Klapdor: I'd never heard of the term Post-Digital before but hear echo's in a recent blog post Digital Mediation . I have this urge to move beyond the simple notion of digital as tool use and more about the human context. What's possible not what is. To move beyond digital/analogue terminology and not have to quantify everything in these terms. Like most good things - I'd say the papers was about 5 years ahead of the curve.

Interesting presentation - http://www.slideshare.net/asmyk/digital-kids-and-technology-bias-girl-geeks-to-edition - am wondering if this Digital First generation is actually post-digital? A few examples in the presentation - phone = camera, Kindle = book. Home phone is one I've picked up on with my daughter (3). She thought it was a toy like this -

We don't even have a radio - so confusion when Grandma referred to it.