In Search of a Digital Philosophy

In his article “In Search of a Digitial Philosophy,” from the New York Times’ 2 July 2002 Europe section, Anand Giridharadas uses an incident at the 2010 World Cup event in South Africa as a way to investigate the idea of a digital philosophy. A disputed goal in a match between Germany and England, and the International Soccer Federation’s refusal to use instant replay technology to resolve the issue, becomes a touchstone for the ways that individuals and organizations need to be deliberate about our choices in determining what does–and does not–become part of our digital cultures:

“To digitize something is not merely to bring efficiency to it. It is also in many cases to change it in a fundamental way, to give it a new essence. To digitize sport, book-reading, dating — to do any of these things is transformative. The transformations can be good, bad or both. Whichever it is, digitization brings hard choices about the essences of particular human activities, and what of them we will negotiate away for the expediency of technology. Yet we often stumble upon the choices rather than choose them.”