Communications Systems Towards Preserving Digital Heritage

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The new media is strongly emphasized on the Information-Communications systems deployment and almost always correlates to digital media. In fact, some theorist exactly defined it by computer and communications use. Thus, Manovich (2001) defined new media by modern media and computers convergence based on five principles: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and cultural transcodification. Manovich’s fifth principle describes also the social effects of computer where the software mediation creates new digital culture. These issues relate to the Information-Communications systems comprising new media elements and communications-computer convergence deployment.

Very similar to the concept of Information-Communications systems slightly developed from the beginning of the 1980s, informing systems comprise three vital constitutional components. Cohen (1999) stated that informing systems consist of three components:

-Informing environment - the system components of the system on the informer's and sender's side.

-Delivery system - the combination of technological and non-technological elements including the communications channel

-Task completion system - the components of the system related to the user and receiver of the information.

Thus, Information-Communications systems also have three core categories: the content (digital objects), communications (channels and media), and interfaces (information appliances). Information-Communications systems make also interactive extended communication - a form of a discourse network. Liu (2004) describes a discourse network as the network of technologies and institutions providing the entire society selection, storing, and processing relevant data. In such way, the society creates new media based information age heritage.

From the viewpoint of information technology, the current information-communications systems converge with media - this convergence is about communications - services/interfaces - content triangle. Thus, we are confronted with new form of media mostly presented with the term of digital, reshaping not only media industry but also a cultural milieu of entire nation on regional and global basis. The new digital devices as smart devices, linked through communications systems, are creating new forms of information-communications systems. Thus, the new form of information appliances and ubiquitous information technology creates the basis for the concept of an information-processing utility. Based on interactive and ubiquitous carriers of information, the first generation of new information-communications systems evolved to provide easy communication over time and space barriers. These new information-communications systems are media. They are virtual communication spaces for groups and societies interested in the exchange of information and knowledge in a global environment. Further promising technologies are pervasive computing and augmented reality. The notion of pervasive computing is a convergence of the Internet and mobile technologies. The emergence of communications networks in which smart devices communicate with each other and with the rest of the system opens the new forms of information processing performed by smart devices. Hence, we are entering the era of new media. New media are tools that transform our perception of the world and in turn render it invisible or visible just as the culture.

Open network

The Web as a platform promotes the digital revolution and the democracy in some way. Like democracy itself, it steadily gives some kinds of protection. Thus, in the context of the overall open systems democracy, the Internet neutrality is one of the core issues, which needs to be preserved in order to allow the unrestricted development of the Web, based on its principles of universality and de-centralization (Berners-Lee, 2010). In this process, open standards are the key in promoting innovation and creativity of the Internet use and in creating the diverse richness of Web sites. The open principle within network ecosystem design thus includes the principle of universality: This principle provides the Web with openness of technology by which every part of the network, information sources and the content has universal identification and presentation: The information flow is not dependent on technology anymore as the result of open principle deployment.

The question arises toward information age formalization as Internet civilization. This notion opens up the insight into reaching eternity of information sources and their digital assets. However, there is no yet adequate storage method for digital assets that can keep recorded content for century or so. In the information age society digital assets are stored through interconnected information repositories, and with the vulnerability of information technology we may lose a huge set of information making our knowledge partial. In the near past, information professionals predicted the inter-connected information environment a long time before the Web use. These activities were done through mapping and indexing associations between ideas, facts, and documents very similar to the way in which information is indexed by the human brain. Putting them in the context of the Web environment and we could find new solutions connected very often with the Semantic Web.

The Semantic Web encapsulates a vision of a Web of Linked Data, enabling the automated or semi-automated querying, sharing, and interpretation of data from distributed sources in heterogeneous formats (Shadbolt, Hall, & Berners-Lee, 2006). The basic building blocks are the Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs), which denote pieces of information and context. In such way, available information can be placed in new contexts and reused in unanticipated ways so the Web becomes the ubiquitous hypermedia system.

Open interface/software and presentations

Just like open-source software initiative and concept that is widely used today, there is also open-source hardware concept - the design as well as the code that runs on the designed product is open allowing others to use source design. It strongly influences media devices and user interface ecosystem. The goal is to deploy complete and universal user platform based on openness of technology in order to provide user helpful tools for acquiring knowledge, media consumption and learning for the future.

Computers, the Internet and information appliances have changed the way we live. Nevertheless, most of the technology is constantly in change producing diverse platforms and solutions. It is hard to handle properly and it asks for alternative methods of technology development. As a solution we could find open source concept, which is not a technology, but rather ecology defined through a collaboration that has evolved along with the Internet. The open source software as a system component is related to the source code openness including free modifications, development and additional design. The production of software by open source communities is a microcosm of the same relationship between solutions and open source ecosystems, respectively. The open structure can be viewed as a platform for ecosystems, built around open standards, and transparency. Understanding the dynamics of an open source ecosystem is an admittedly complex but it is obviously that open-structure represents coagulation of an open source ecosystem's infrastructure. The crucial term here is transparency. Transparency is the core category of any successful open source project providing us visibility into the code and the open source community.

Open content and access

Open system concept includes also open access category. Open access category denotes the access to the information technology and to the digital content residing in networked information depositories. This digital content is in a form of any individual media or interconnected hypermedia where the interconnection is executed through a variety of technologies. Hence, the uniform communications system is prerequisite for fully operable open access scenario. It is in a recent time provided by the Internet that allows users to communicate and to gather information. Hence, Information-Communication systems provide a huge set of information that can be accessed as the information commons by anyone, anywhere, any time. It is close to the univerzalization of access, which is needed to avoid multidimensional gap separating those who have and those who do not have universally accessible technology. Such role may take Telecentres as public access points making global knowledge distribution and the base for digital heritage preservation.

Open content just as open software creates new forms of creating and accessing information and knowledge. Information age society is dominantly based on international interactions and information and knowledge content openness empower internationalization of the content making it more accessible to more people around the world. With open content more people be able to access more information repositories improving collective knowledge and memory. Thus, the open content is merely connected with the new open ecosystems through the matrix of sharing as a means by which knowledge is acquired.

Open Access model is in some way accepted in a publication process and is merely oriented to the preservation of institutional digital materials. It also includes open informing activities dealing with the freedom to access, study, and understand information in order to develop knowledge. Such freedoms ask for more efforts in finding ways to foster open content publishing and protection of digital resources. The potential of the open access and its opportunities need new practices in information storing and distribution that are not restrictive in a quantity we met in an era of print media.

Information age society is able to record knowledge by digital technology, and with the open access concept the knowledge becomes open and free as knowledge itself. Information technology is also providing platform for open access and open content, both in the storing and distributing information. However, with the increasing digital content stored and available for sharing, the long-term preservation of the digital repositories must be assured in order to leave our heritage to future generations.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing as an information technology based tool is under the way in the process of preserving digital heritage involving individuals in acquiring and preserving their digital assets. Although there are currently not many cases of applying crowdsourcing in heritage preservation activities, it is obvious that the real potential of crowdsourcing exist.

In open platform community, crowdsourcing is not a new concept. However, it is still not a clear term and category related to the preservation of digital assets. Most crowdsourcing projects in heritage institutions have not involved large individuals. With the Internet and Web tools as a highly interactive and participatory platform there is a room for developing crowdsourcing initiatives. Heritage organizations have central role in connecting individual users to contribute to the preservation of their digital assets through open crowdsourcing initiatives. Cases in present crowdsourcing initiatives are dominantly aimed to the digitized information resources and real digital content is partly left aside.

From the perspective of functionality, there is a notion that crowdsourcing is mostly based on synergy, which combines effects of the individual parts or team members. Synergy in such way actually redirects intellectual power from objects to the relationships between team members, and to the effects produced by these relationships. Corning (1983) proposed that synergy influenced the evolution of cooperation and the evolution of complex systems. We can see these cooperative interactions everywhere around us, and a synergy combines functional effects of the parts interacted in an open system.

It is known fact that the Internet changes our living habits and that it gives us new kinds of creativity and problem-solving. Also, the interconnected individuals and groups create new participation's forms and sharing based on facilities that information resources provide (Shirky, 2010). The Internet as a communication media makes these interactions available to everyone. Thus, when we are focusing on the Web use through the neutral communication media such as the Internet, the crucial role have the terms of openness and universality.

Coping with the terms of openness and universality in the domain of information age heritage preservation, there is steady understanding of the potential of crowdsourcing. The digitization of analogue heritage resources puts heritage organizations closer to the greater use of the Web as a platform for integration of heritage artifacts. Digitization also ensures long-term preservation of the information, especially those held on flimsy media. It creates new ways of access heritage content. When information is in a digital form and part of an open network, there are many possibilities for cultural artifacts to be shared (Oomen & Aroyo, 2011).

Crowdsourcing on the synergy basis creates the base for open, interconnected heritage. Interesting findings are within Crowdsourcing Representation Information to Support Preservation (cRISP) program initiative as collaborative approach in using Web archives for collecting representation information to ensure long term access to digital content where representation information is essential for successful rendering of digital content in the future (Pennock, Jackson, & Wheatley, 2012). It is aimed toward integration of crowd knowledge by which online sources of Representation Information would be found, collected, and preserved.

Further, there are several notions on crowdsourcing implementation in cultural heritage projects each making project less or more successful. These notions are related to human possibilities to capture and present digital information, to models of collaboration that would be acceptable for crowdsourcing as well as to models by which crowdsource team members would share their knowledge made by digital assets they used.

6. Discussion

The value of the information entity in information age depends entirely on its future, and its social mobilization. It depends also on its circulation through communications networks and devices/interfaces that provide the delivery of information. Consequently, confronted on a long-term basis by continuously increasing our knowledge corps, dynamic thought will have to ask what form to give to such a world, and how to install within the information age culture the new informational state of affairs. That is the task that we must fulfill today for our knowledge and memory for everlasting time.

Media is shaped by two core categories - time (short as possible) and space (long as possible) making information society we knew until today. But the processing technology development is almost finished and the information society not long exists in previous way. It is about the communication as the vehicle for any information process thus making new form of communication society. Communication is with human from the early days of our civilization and it is the tool for all human evolution phases. Further, information assets and artifacts become more outdated with the new media making information process virtual activity with virtual artifacts that often disappears when entire information-communication activity is finished. What would the future civilizations find about our information society with digital information assets and in many cases virtual artifacts?

Hence, we need adequate techniques and tools preserving digital heritage of information and knowledge society. Traditional museum, libraries and similar institutions are not more suitable to cope with the digital heritage, and there is a need for digital repositories of whole social knowledge corps. These new knowledge/memory institutions for the digital society will preserve the digital matrix of information society alongside traditional archives, libraries and museums. Preserving the digital heritage is principally a joint public and private responsibility where specific and well-developed heritage institutions exist for specific types of culture, government and scientific information. These institutions are well on their way towards digital preservation, but the digital is a characteristic of almost all forms of cultural expression, well beyond the boundaries of traditional forms of culture. To preserve this aspect of the modern world, we need a new type of heritage institution and actions for encouraging the establishment of digital heritage repositories. In some extent, this portion of heritage preservation activity could be denoting with the crowdsourcing efforts derived from the open platforms conceptualization and open source ecosystems.

Each society has its collective knowledge that is product of technology and culture. When information technology is acting as the bearer of social knowledge, information technology professionals have important role in the process of recognizing knowledge as asset that is the product of interconnected nodes of information, people, tools, and social norms and values. Thus, every society has to find its own culture portfolio residing in information technology use. Technology should be accepted in accordance with the entire cultural values and beliefs of an organization's members. Every individual with his or her learning models and acquired knowledge brings his or her share to organization's knowledge corps. All of these create new digital society heritage in which every digital connected individual involves. With the development of sciences, technology and economy of countries, and the advancement of people’s cultural level, many countries slowly but surely put more emphasis to the preservation of their cultural heritage. The whole society recognizes the dimension of preserving human’s heritage and maintaining our intellectual base. However, with the rapid technology development, we are in front of the new need to conserve our heritage within new information society. In the context of Internet and social networks, every piece of information base is incorporated into digital objects. Digital objects of a specific type are embedded in a networked environment and cannot be separated from other object types. The digital is a characteristic of almost all forms of cultural expression in information age, and digital objects become the atoms, the building blocks of information society. To preserve this aspect of the modern world, we need a new type of heritage institution and new forms of activities, tools, and techniques capable to solve this task successfully. The artifacts from past civilizations were analyzed by history, archeology, sociology and policy sciences making us more wisdom about past of our humankind. But, would this stream exist in future after our civilization dominant by information technology no more exists.

It is of crucial importance for any organization or society trying to keep entire knowledge corps in a way of continuity, to capture the critical knowledge of each individual and to ensure the transfer of that knowledge to successor generations. The key to knowledge continuity is preserving the relationship and building a network to enable communication. Hence, the importance of the Information-Communications systems arise to the extent where each society has to find the ways for open networks, open content and open interactions in order to make the base for everlasting preservation of the digital heritage that information age civilization will create. This heritage will remain for future civilizations, too.