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THEORY OF DIGITAL OBJECTS
The Theory of digital objects and digital systems based on the adoption, adaptation, and extension of existing theories of ontology, semantics, and semiotics. This is a realist theory that does not countenance the independent existence of nonmaterial objects in the world.
Theory of digital objects explores the nature and attributes of digital content, particularly regarding its persistence, identification, and preservation in an environment of constant change. Unlike physical artifacts, digital objects are inherently mutable, distributed, and reconfigurable, presenting a unique set of challenges for memory institutions like libraries and archives.
The concept is a core component of the Digital Object Architecture (DOA), a framework for managing information over the internet developed by [1]Robert Kahn, a co-inventor of the [2]TCP/IP protocol.
The aim is to delve deeply into the technology, to understand precisely how the new technology is different from previous as it interacts with social variables.
Defining a digital object
A digital object is defined as a sequence of bits, or a set of bit sequences, that incorporates a work or other information. A key element is a persistent, globally unique identifier that is distinct from the object's storage ___location.
A digital object is not the same as a traditional computer file, though it may contain one or more files. Instead, it is a conceptual entity that bundles together the following components:
- Data files: The digital content itself, such as text, images, or audio
- Metadata: Structured data that provides information about the object.
- Persistent identifier: A unique, long-lasting ID, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), that points to the object and its metadata.
Key attributes of digital objects
A 2010 paper in First Monday[3] identified several key attributes that distinguish digital objects from physical artifacts and challenge traditional archival practices:
- Editability: Digital objects are pliable and can be modified continuously. This contrasts with physical artifacts, where information is "as viscous as molasses and as difficult to manipulate" once inscribed. This continuous editing destabilizes the concept of an original, authoritative version.
- Interactivity: Digital objects are designed to be interactive, requiring specific software and hardware to be rendered and used. This dependence on technology makes them fragile and susceptible to obsolescence.
- Openness: Digital objects can be accessed and modified by other digital objects and programs, allowing for a deeper interpenetration of content and code than with physical media. This openness drives increasing interoperability across systems.
- Distributedness: Digital objects are often temporary assemblies of functions and content spread across different parts of a network. The distributed nature of the internet makes them borderless, weakening the importance of any single component.
The Digital Object Architecture (DOA)
The DOA is a model for managing digital objects with a persistent identifier, aiming to address the need for long-term information management beyond just data transport.
Components
The DOA specifies three main components:
- Identifier/Resolution System: This system assigns unique, persistent identifiers to digital objects and resolves them to current information about the object, including its ___location and access policies. The Handle System is the primary technology used for this.
- Repository System: Manages and stores the digital objects. It provides access to the objects based on their identifiers, abstracting away the underlying storage technology.
- Registry System: Stores metadata about the digital objects. The metadata is linked to the object's identifier and can be updated even if the object's ___location changes.
Digital objects are often deemed to be hybrid objects that are partially composed of material and nonmaterial objects[4] (e.g., Faulkner & Runde, 2019).
As such, do we now have a new type of reality—a hybrid reality— that is the “digital world”? If so, how do the three worlds relate—the material, the nonmaterial, and the digital? Digital objects have also been characterized as having a “dubious ontology”.
How, then, do objects characterized in these ways interact with other objects? Answers to such questions are widely consequential. As human reliance on information technology (IT) increases, having a clear, precise, and comprehensive understanding of the nature of digital objects and digital systems becomes more critical. Otherwise, our ability to research, manage, control, and make high-quality predictions about them will be limited.
We have two goals for our theory:-
(a) To enable better theorizing about and empirical research on digital objects and digital systems
(b) To provide a foundation for their better design, management, use, and maintenance.
Social practices and digital objects
The unique attributes of digital objects have created a tension between two competing social practices for managing them.
| spect | Memorability (The Archival Web) | Navigability (The Navigable Web) |
|---|---|---|
| Institutional Setting | Memory institutions (libraries, archives) attempting to preserve digital culture for future generations. | A web search apparatus involving search engines, SEO consultants, and website owners who want their content to be found. |
| Function | Focus on preservation, creating a stable record of digital artifacts. | Focus on findability and immediate access to information. |
| Tension | The inherent fluidity and instability of digital objects challenge the traditional archival goal of creating a permanent, recognizable artifact. | The constant rewriting and optimizing of digital objects to improve search engine rankings destabilizes document retrieval and can bias historical records. |
| Emerging Practices | "Freezing" the mutability of objects by taking snapshots (like the Wayback Machine) and creating new types of archival records. | The continuous editing and rewriting of digital content to enhance its searchability, rather than its archival value. |
Faulkner and Runde (2019)[4] propose an ontology that has three types of digital objects in the world:
(a) material (e.g., smartphones and servers)
(b) nonmaterial (e.g., syntactic objects such as newspaper articles and software)
(c) hybrid (objects that have both material and nonmaterial components, such as a laptop computer with software).
The nature of materiality and nonmateriality and these different types of objects is often unclear.
Fourth, some authors focus on function and form and background the underlying material substrate (the level structure of basic and composite material components)
The Theory of Digital Obejects has five components:
(1) ontological foundation
(2) semantics and semiotics foundations
(3) definitions of and explication of digital objects and digital systems
(4) Nature of digital interpretations
(5) Nature of properties, functions, and mechanisms in digital objects and digital systems.
- The first component establishes the basic constructs used in the theory.
- The second component frames our conception of digital objects and digital systems as types of signs. Equipped with these two foundational components,
- The third explains the nature of digital objects and digital systems.
- The fourth component examines how digital objects and digital systems, as signs, are interpreted.
- The fifth component examines the nature of properties, functions, forms, and mechanisms in digital objects and digital systems.
As with “digital object,” the term “digital system” is a misnomer because it implies the system has properties that map to digits and not bits. To disambiguate these terms, we define them as follows:
- Digital Material Object (DMO): A digital material object is an atomic digital symbol.
- Digital Conceptual Object (DCO): A digital conceptual object is an atomic digital construct.
- Digital Material System (DMS): A digital material system is an artificial material system that has at least one component that is a digital material object or another digital material system.
- Digital Conceptual System (DCS): A digital conceptual system is an artificial conceptual system that has at least one component that is a digital conceptual object or another digital conceptual system. A digital object exists by virtue of a modelling choice.
Digital objects fall into two principal types:
a) Generative (flexible and extensible by its users, e.g., PCs, Internet, Wikipedia); and
b) Information appliances (those tailored to a specific task or context, e.g., iPhone, Xbox gaming console).
Definition of Digital Object and Digital System Attributes of Digital Object:
- Immanent, unstable hybrid, material
- Lacking clear identity
- Performative rather than representing something Faulkner and Runde (2009) [4]Identity of a technological object. Not defined. Focus is technological objects.
- Identity
- Form
- Functions
- Nature of technological objects is constituted by their physical form and social function.
- Physical form of technological objects underdetermines their functions.
- Functions are assigned to technological objects by social groups.
- Identities of technological objects a real feature of the social world. Kallinikos (2009)[5] How technology of computation shapes and reshapes the ways humans perceive the world. Technological and computational objects are not defined but appear to be similar to, if not the same as, digital objects.
- Computational objects are vertically stratified.
- Computation is performative. Binary nature of computation enables exchanges to occur across qualitatively different domains of “natural, social, and technical reality.”
- Authors Research Focus Definition of Digital Object and Digital System Attributes of Digital Object and Digital System Some Implications Kallinikos, Aaltonen, and Marton (2010) [6]“Provide the conceptual scaffold on which to develop a theory of digital objects.”
- Digital objects include all digital technologies, digital devices, and digital cultural artifacts (e.g., music).
- Digital objects are objects only in an elusive and perhaps euphemistic way.”
- Digital objects are “marked” by a limited number of attributes.
- Editability
- Interactivity
- Openness
- Distributedness
- Modular composition
Digital materiality is said to be Properties of digital artifacts and infrastructure:
- Programmability
- Addressability Digital artifacts increasingly mediate human experience of the world at the individual
- Focus is digital artifacts. different from physical materiality. · Sensibility
- Communicability
- Memorizability
- Traceability
- Associability Digital materiality is:
- Fungible
- Ephemeral
- Indeterministic Physical materiality is:
- Rigid
- Stable
- Tangible group, organizational, and community levels.
- “Digitization” is defined as “encoding of analog information into digital format.”
- “Digital innovation” is defined as using new combinations of digital and physical components to produce novel products.”
“Key characteristics” of digital innovation:
- · Reprogrammability
- · Homogenization of data
· Self-referencing Digital artifacts are embedded into layered, modular architectures that help separate content from devices and information infrastructures. The outcome is “profound changes in a firm’s organizing logic and innovation.”[7] Kallinikos and Mariátegui (2011) Understanding the processes by which video production is carried out as digital technologies evolve.
Digital objects are an “ensemble of operations temporarily stabilized.” Digital objects are:
- Open
- Editable
- Expandable Video metadata is increasingly important as a means of coordinating activities across multiple people, locations,
Some Implications:-
- Composed of finegrained operations
· Networked platforms as digitization allows video production to be unbundled and broken up into smaller components and processes. Digital objects are objects on the World Wide Web that are composed of data that is formalized via schemas or ontologies that generalize as metadata.
· Programmable
- Relational
- Changeable Digital objects appear in three phases:
- objects
- data
- networks
- Bits are the atomic state of representation.”
- Temporal state of information is a digital information process.”
- Investigation of digital objects to find a new relation between object and mind.” Kallinikos (2012) To show that “technological evolution has loosened the bonds between functions, form, and matter” and that function has become progressively more important.
Four attributes of digital technology:
Evolution of digital artifacts can be studied using some Implications artifacts enables their generative evolution. (a process) is defined as
(a) encoding analog information in a digital format
(b)possible subsequent reconfigurations of the socio-technical context in which digital products are consumed and used.
- all information can be structured as binary digits
- digitalization embedded into non-digital tools
- has immaterial attributes · an enabling technology genetics-based approach.
- Digital artifacts can be characterized as a sequence of a set of fixed base elements or “mutations” to these fixed base elements. Faulkner and Runde (2013) To propose an ontological foundation and a general theory of technological objects within critical realism’s Transformational Model of Social Reality.
“The defining characteristic of objects is that are structured continuants”— composed of parts that are always present throughout the object’s existence.
A technological object is one “that has one or more uses assigned to it by the members of some human community.”
Two classes of technological objects:
a) material and nonmaterial. Properties of technological objects:
b) Identity (based on function and form)
Social position Properties of nonmaterial technological objects:
- Non-rivalry in use
- Non-excludability
- Additional material bearers of nonmaterial technological objects can be created almost instantaneously at almost zero cost.
- Non-excludability property of n
- Nonmaterial technological objects creates problems for protection of intellectual property rights. Kallinikos et al. (2013) “To shed light of the conditions in which Digital artifacts are objects “that lack the plenitude and stability offered by Digital artifacts are:
- Intentionally incomplete
- Digital artifacts challenge two fundamental
Focus Definition of Digital Object and Digital System Attributes
- Perpetually in the making
- Modular
- Granular in constitution
- Editable
- Interactive
- Reprogrammable
- Distributable
- Functionally agnostic principles of archival practice: provenance and authenticity
- Digital objects introduce a double instability into information search and retrieval as both the target and displayed content from search engines constantly adapt to each other.
- Digital objects are embedded in larger digital ecosystems where relationships among objects in these ecosystems constantly change. Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2015)[8] Impact of rapidly increasing amounts of digital information. Digitization is turning all kinds of information and media into bits.
Economic properties of digital information
- Use is non-rival
- Low cost to reproduce Increased amounts of digitalized information facilitate better understanding and prediction of how the world works.
- ^ Erwin, Charlotte; Levi, Erik (2001). Kahn, Robert. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.14596.
- ^ "Appendices", The ABCs of TCP/IP, Auerbach Publications, 2002-10-29, doi:10.1201/9781420000382.bmatt, ISBN 978-0-8493-1463-6, retrieved 2025-08-25
- ^ Geersten, Anders (1998-12-07). "First Monday Evolves: Editorial". First Monday. 3 (12). doi:10.5210/fm.v3i12.630. ISSN 1396-0466.
- ^ a b c Faulkner, Philip; Runde, Jochen (2019-12-01). "Theorizing the Digital Object1". MIS Quarterly. 43 (4): 1279–1302. doi:10.25300/misq/2019/13136. ISSN 0276-7783.
- ^ "Kallinikos von Petra (281)". Jacoby Online. doi:10.1163/1873-5363_fgrh.0281.bnjo-2-comm3-eng. Retrieved 2025-08-25.
- ^ Kallinikos, Jannis; Aaltonen, Aleksi; Marton, Attila (2010-06-05). "A theory of digital objects". First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v15i6.3033. ISSN 1396-0466.
- ^ Kallinikos, Jannis; Mariátegui, José-Carlos (October 2011). "Video as Digital Object: Production and Distribution of Video Content in the Internet Media Ecosystem". The Information Society. 27 (5): 281–294. doi:10.1080/01972243.2011.607025. ISSN 0197-2243.
- ^ Balkaya, Ensar (2021-09-15). "Andrew McAfee ve Erik Brynjolfsson, Makine-Platform-Kitle: Dijital Geleceği Kucaklamak, İstanbul: Optimist Yayın Grubu, 2018, 423 s." Journal of Humanity and Society (Insan & Toplum). 11 (3): 273–277. doi:10.12658/d0298.
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