1.  Digital

Emerging young adults were born and grew up immersed in information technology.  They are said to be the “most informed generation” of all times.  Throughout their young lives they were “bathed in bits and bytes of information”.   But what is the nature of this “information”? 

It is “digital” information, i.e. it is virtual reality rather than (the immediate experience of) everyday reality.  What we experience when we access computer information is a certain form of information, information that is digitally shaped by the medium that delivers it.  It invites us to make a statement of opinion or preference with respect to the specific information that is offered.   Digital information is information that is inherently open to evaluation and appropriation as a response.

More concretely, this type of information is like a gigantic dictionary or encyclopedia, which provides knowledge on any conceivable topic.  Like an encyclopedia it provides the user with a multitude of largely unverified facts.  For that reason it looks more like a compendium of opinions than data, each of which may or may not conflict with other opinions.  The sheer volume of digital information requires specific cognitive skills such as skimming, scanning, scrolling, surfing, sorting, categorizing and creatively tinkering with this information.  For all these reasons digital information presents the user with a collection of stand alone bits of knowledge, and, because of its fragmented nature, invites one to combine and re-combine these items into ever more innovative configurations.  In short, computerized digital information is tailor made for remixing its components into a changeable collage of style and preference.  The whole of this activity takes on the quality of a game.  In comparison with everyday experience, and regardless of how one attempts to process digital information, it is at best a facsimile of everyday experience. It is hard to escape the sense that this type of knowledge is inherently artificial.