Digital Technologies and the Role of Data in Cultural Heritage: The Past, the Present, and the Future

Abstract

Is culture considered to be our past, our roots, ancient ruins, or an old piece of art? Culture is all the factors that define who we are, how we act and interact in our world, in our daily activities, in our personal and public relations, in our life. Culture is all the things we are not obliged to do. However, today, we live in a mixed environment, an environment that is a combination of “offline” and the online, digital world. In this mixed environment, it is technology that defines our behaviour, technology that unites people in a large world, that finally, defines a status of “monoculture”. In this article, we examine the role of technology, and especially big data, in relation to the culture. We present the advances that led to paradigm shifts in the research area of cultural informatics, and forecast the future of culture as will be defined in this mixed world.