Everything is going digital – even natural history! A vast variety of digitial approaches are currently revolutionizing our natural history museums, our view of the animate and inanimate natural world, and our scientific possibilities. The project BioDigitalization was conducted in close cooperation with the Natural History Museum Vienna and addresses relating potentials and open questions.
Do you know ABOL – the “Austrian Barcode of Life”? DigiBotA – an initiative for digitizing botanical collections in Austria? Or WORMS – the World Register of Marine Species? Behind the closed doors of a venerable Austrian institution, a quiet revolution is currently taking place: the specimen we know from the historical display cases are getting digital twins, supported by complex infrastructures and global networks. While the space for analogue objects is limited, the space for their digital doubles seems endless. While the former are tied to a specific location, digitization promises unlimited availability.
But digital infrastructures and practices are also confronted with material limits, with new and old challenges. In close cooperation with the Natural History Museum Vienna, funded by the City of Vienna's Department of Cultural Affairs, this ITA project was dedicated to the diverse processes of biodigitalization for which the Natural History Museum acts as an essential national and transnational hub. Open questions and design options were discussed with regard to the demands of responsible research and development as recently propagated by the paradigm 'digital humanism'. How can we ensure that socio-technical innovation is open, fair, diverse, sustainable and democratic, and what could that mean in this specific context?
To this end, we brought together two expert communities: the scientists, technicians and educators at the Natural History Museum are just as essential to this project as the knowledge of technology assessment practitioners regarding the societal impact of digital infrastructures and practices. The results of this study are published as an ITA dossier and scientific report.
-> The use of new digital technologies is a topic of interest to nearly all social institutions, and natural history museums are no exception.
-> How do digital objects, technologies, and platforms influence life science research as well as collection and exhibition practices?
-> The range of new possibilities is broad, and in many cases digital infrastructures are combined with genetic approaches.
-> Rather than simply replacing analogue technologies, objects, and processes, digital technologies are contributing to far-reaching transformations.
-> Der Einsatz neuer digitaler Technologien beschäftigt nahezu alle
gesellschaftlichen Institutionen und macht auch vor naturhistorischen
Museen nicht halt.
-> Wie wirken sich digitale Objekte, Techniken
und Plattformen auf lebenswissenschaftliche Forschung und
Ausstellungspraxis aus?
-> Die Palette an neuen Möglichkeiten ist breit; teils werden digitale Infrastrukturen mit genetischen Methoden kombiniert.
->
Oft werden analoge Techniken, Objekte und Abläufe nicht einfach durch
digitale Optionen ersetzt; es kommt vielmehr auf längere Sicht zu
weitreichenden Transformationen.
Kastenhofer, K. (Speaker)
Kastenhofer, K. (Speaker)
Kastenhofer, K. (Speaker)
