Digital Pasts Analog Futures

Kivonat, rövid leírás

The Digital Pasts Analog Futures PhD thesis focuses on the future, exploring whether analogue values will continue to be needed in human existence, communication, learning and development in the age of digitization and beyond. The subject of the research is handwriting, a human activity that is not only a simple recording of information, but also a multifaceted process of coordination that enables the acquisition and maintenance of additional skills. The main research question of the dissertation is how humanity today relates to digital and analogue solutions, how the inevitability of analogue solutions can be identified in our everyday thinking and actions. The research can be divided into four main phases. (1) The first phase was a literature analysis and systematic literature review, which examined the past and present of handwriting across disciplines. The primary aim was to explore the status of handwriting as an analogue value and human activity. (2) In the second exploratory phase, we examined essays written by young adults (also CUB students) (typed and handwritten) detailing their analogue and digital experiences. This aims to explore and validate the problem and the issues raised in detail. (3) The third phase is a design interaction in the form of a collaborative netnographic analysis. (4) The fourth phase was a design action, which resulted in a crowd funding project around a real product (a writing instrument) created in the framework of the research. The research is based on a combination of different paradigms. The interplay of the above phases has contributed greatly to the results of the research. The first and second research phases have shown that analogue values such as handwriting have a place, relevance and future in the digital world. The third, netnographic analysis phase led to a real-world connection, whereby the resulting data was coded and the results interpreted to formulate all the characteristics of the product created during the design action, and contributed to the marketing, economic, scheduling, production and management plans for the crowd funding project. The success of the design and sales phase of the design action not only financed it economically, but also validated all the phases and results of the research