Thoughts on Real vs. Nonreal in Digitization

Digitization of almost everything has altered the way we perceive and absorb information, for better or for worse.

Anecdote

When doing some preliminary reading about this topic, specifically regarding the stark difference between perception of real objects compared with perception of real objects which have been digitized, one example recently relevant to me came to mind. Last year, I had been apartment shopping. Nowadays, everyone offers virtual tours of apartments on their website, where you just type in a url and click through a full apartment. This seems like a great way to get to know a space! While true to some extent, for every apartment that I ended up seeing in person, it was like a completely different place. Granted, the various pictures in the virtual tour were real images of the real apartment, but being fully immersed in the environment added a dimension that was impossible to gain digitally. I would liken this experience to digitization of history, or any other information. While you can gain an understanding of a real world thing through studying it digitally, there is certainly an unspoken benefit associated with being present with it.

Non vs. Nonreal History in Action

As I had been browsing the various databases offered by the Library of Virginia, a few collections stood out as relevant to this topic

American Periodicals - This collection holds digital images of periodicals from magazines and journals dating from 1740 - 1940. A collection like this represents a sort of "middle ground" between the real and nonreal. Specifically, the images of the periodicals are images of the real item (i.e.: not just a type-up of the words on the item), but the experience is nonetheless different than it would have been had you held the magazine in your hand.

Historic Map Works Library Edition - A database like this one is an example of an instance when the digitization of "real" history may be aided by making it not real. This source provides access to US cadastral maps dating back to the 1700s. Further, the maps can be overlayed with the current day GoogleMaps. This is an interesting method in which the digitization of the information can make it more relevant to the user in a way that may allow for more effective absorption of information which was made "nonreal".