Students, local residents and academics gathered at the Mathematics Institute yesterday, wondering how four speakers would answer the question "What Does it Mean to be Human in the Digital Age?". Lynne Brindley, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, and previously Chief Executive of the British Library, opened the discussions, calling herself a digital immigrant, but welcoming the younger digital natives (born into a digital world), and setting the philosophical tone of the evening.
Dr Christopher Fletcher, Keeper of Special Collections at the Bodleian Library and the University Archives, opened the discussions. He spoke about the continuing – and even increasing – interest in the analogue form of the word (whether printed book, manuscript or archive), despite the immense digitisation of information. Indeed, last year Amazon opened a physical bookshop in Seattle, so the desire to pick up a book and read has not evaporated with the advent of Kindles and tablets.
Tom Chatfield, British author, technology theorist, and commentator, coined this "high friction" time, whether it is leafing through the pages of a book, or putting pen to paper – many of us still crave and occasionally prefer these activities – perhaps welcome reprieves from the constant pushing of keyboard buttons or the addictive swiping of fingers across smart phone screens.
While Dr Fletcher pondered on the difficulties of preserving and archiving digital information, Dr Emma J. Smith, lecturer in English at the University of Oxford, called for the right to forget. Some information should be kept in the trashbin of history. We do not need to record all tweets ever tweeted for historical prosperity.
Dr Smith also touched on the depleting sense of "aliveness" that some digitisation enforces. Live theatre carries with it a specific aura – because of the time and space in which it occurs. Watching a piece of theatre that is either live-streamed into cinemas or available on DVD having been "recorded live" deadens the magic of being present as a piece of art unfolds.
I agree. But, I cannot help wonder whether theatre needs to be made more accessible to those of a variety of different social classes and ethnic backgrounds. While the experience may be quantitatively different, a cinema ticket is cheaper than a theatre ticket. Digitisation can introduce new art forms to those who may otherwise lack the means to access it. Perhaps, though, this is not an argument for more digitisation, but an argument for better access to theatre for all!
Conversely, Diane Lees, Director-General of the Imperial War Museums, celebrated the role digitisation can play in remembering. The Imperial War Museum has built active contributor communities through crowd sourcing projects, such as 'Lives of the First World War', where thousands of people – from Britain and its ex-colonies – all of whom had families that served in the war – have crowdsourced oral histories and data about the impacts of the First World War on survivors and their families.
We then moved from the very practical to the existential with Tom Chatfield's presentation. Technology and machines challenge our presumptions that we are autonomous, rational minds – when we are actually intensely social, emotional, intractably embodied creatures, and ones who have little in common with our machines – although they increasingly both amplify and usurp us in the world we have made. If we wish to understand our own natures, he contended, machines aren't going to solve our problems or even point us in the right direction. He asked us to think beyond efficiency and what it meant to create and work for lives worth living.
While this was a fantastic question to end on, I couldn't help wondering about the themes that were left untouched. Last week, the World Bank released a paper on the digital divide. While billions are increasingly connected online, almost half the world's population are not. And, can we continue to justify the benefits we reap from electronics made from minerals mined in questionable conditions and assembled in Korean or Chinese sweatshops? What it means to be human in a digital age depends very much on where you're standing.