Friday, April 17, 2015

Unit 10: What Is Real and Not Real in the Digital and Real Worlds



The first thought of reality and non-reality of the digital world, was that not all information online or that is digitalized is real.  That people/companies spend a lot of time changing and altering items that can be found online.  That not everything posted online is real.  I remember years ago having a conversation with my parents and them sharing an experience that they heard on TV and me stating, “You know that isn’t real life right.”  I feel like that same statement can be said about many things online and in the digital world.  

Then thinking about what this week’s lecture was about, is how physical, scanned and digital items can be seen as different.  I know that anytime a student or a person goes to a museum the thought of that object is way different then when they simple see a picture of it.  That holding a physical document can make your experiences a lot different.  In the world we life today the accessibility and flexibility of seeing more sources online is becoming more and more a reality. I do not believe that if a person could never see an area then it can never be a real experience.  

Physically touching a resource is the best but if that is not available I do believe that seeing this item as a scanned or digital item is second best.  I think these new items are going to become our world’s new reality. 

1 comment:

  1. Yes, the physical presence of an object is much different. This question, I think about real v. unreal in the digital world, I think, is a question for philosophers. But it raises the issue of abstraction. Students often have no idea how abstract the history that they read in a history textbook is. They just assume that it is real, but in reality it is just the sum of real actions, if that makes sense.

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