Critique of digitization project reveals impacts on heritage conservation and raises concerns about innovation.
Based on an in-depth ethnographic survey of a major heritage digitization project, this text critically examines the recent changes in the notion of heritage enhancement and deflates the promise of digitization as a vector for the long-term preservation of humanity’s heritage. In particular, it examines how the technological enhancement of heritage carries with it transformations in the content of heritage and its status, founding digitized heritage as a raw material for innovation and research, the conservation of which no longer appears to be a priority. This transformation is taking place on a heritage scene that is undergoing major changes, particularly as a result of the spread of the Google model (and its unparalleled economic success) in a version to be applied to heritage corpora, also characterized by the slogan “enhance your data!”. But with the paradigm of techno-cultural enhancement, is it always the heritage that is enhanced? Between valuing heritage and mobilizing heritage as an asset, have we measured the implications of what is presented in the form of an enhancement imperative on the destiny of our heritage?
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Camus et al. (2020) studied this question.
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