Introduction
The growth of the web has continuously hastened and prevailed in multiple business models. Therefore, a large number of customers and often non-standardized services that hinder web and mobile application development and sustainability have been influenced. In most cases, web connection objects are incompatible with applications designed for developers. However, their lifespan remains the same or less than the explicit software lifecycle. The general research approach that motivates the current contribution in literature is the following:
How can we build cognitive cooperative software agents around the World Wide Web,
which are amodal representations of specific goals and current or past
situations, that can be fed both by existing knowledge distributed around the
web and implicit or explicit human knowledge?
To start, agents focused in the Internet of Things and Smart Cities that comprise of cities that work in a frugal and sound way, by incorporating every one of its substructure and administrations into a unified whole and utilizing insightful gadgets for observing and
control, to guarantee maintainability and effectiveness. This treatise thus
seeks to discuss and explore the fundamental principles for which smart agents
require in different situations. Before we start addressing this issue, we need
to define what it would mean from a theoretical point of view for such an agent
to accomplish a goal, how it can succeed on that goal, and what are the means
to validate its success. This means that we need to explore and define a solid
the foundation of what are the inner workings for such imaginary agents.
For humans, the knowledge is mostly implicitly declared for succeeding a specific task, as for example chopping wood. I need an axe, some wood, and I need to apply my chopping techniques to the wood. The implicit knowledge here, most commonly referred to as common knowledge, is that there are two objects and I have to apply the first one to the second by utilizing a specific function. Similarly, we need to define what are the objects and the possible functions of the application that a digital agent can interact with.
First and foremost, this article gives a sneak preview of the concept of digital objects, then discusses and explains the aspect of digital affordances and the correlation between the two. Later, it moves forward to presenting some modern approaches to dealing with digital objects. Finally, the series will conclude by making major deductions from the study.
Digital Objects
Defining the Digital Object
Different literature outline various definitions for digital objects. According to Hui (2012), digital objects can be simply explained as things that are found on the Web including: Facebook profiles, YouTube videos, Instagram pictures, Flickr images, etc that are made up of data, then formalized by patterns, structures or ontologies, which an individual can take a broad view as metadata. These digital objects permeate our daily lives on the web, and it is extremely difficult for users to disconnect or distinguish online from offline content anymore, as pointed out decades ago by the achievement of “jacking into cyberspace.” Paskin (2003) indicates that any name provided to a digital media item should be unique, the meaning of a first class. Therefore, its identity should be independent of the other available digital items.
Morrissey’s (2014) article “How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?” adds that
digital objects have a restricted set of changeable broad characteristics such
as editability, candidness, interactivity, and distributness. It is necessary
for a digital object to be authenticated during its creation in a way that
conveys a high level of confidence to all the users interacting with it,
including successive use by the originator.
A digital object cannot be used without a computing environment in which it can focus in and executed. If the digital world is keen on guaranteeing long-standing usability of digital objects, to enable them to be used regardless of varying formats, hardware, and software, it is essential to preserve the digital objects’ computing environments, or to, at least, collect sufficient data, to enable the computing environment to be reassembled or adjusted to a transformed sphere (Morrissey, 2014). It is important to know the basics of preservation terminologies to understand the importance of preserving digital objects. Its preservation metadata can be explained as the information that is required to allow the conservation of digital objects effectively for a long time to allow their retrieval and deployment in a certain usage at some point (Dappert et al. 2013). Information that defines the adequate elements of the objects’ computing environment of the digital object has to be an element of its preservation metadata.
Methodologies for creating an Object within
the Digital world in the Information Era
Tim (2009) suggests that in the process of digital image creation, the use of computer software and hardware are necessary for the purpose of manipulation and creation of computer effects. Originally, many artists were attracted to digital frugally and soundly they offered creative opportunities that were not possible through traditional means. Various physical elements have been created before and shaped by the different designers over the years trying to fit in the human body. Increasingly, many physical objects have become networked into the Internet. Technology offers the significant interaction merits such that one can handle control as well as check on various things even when not physically present.
Many techniques of printmaking have been consequently considered as a part of a
digital process for a specific time, especially those that combine the inkjet
printing to the traditional materials of art. Many of those digital procedures
include various printmaking techniques rather than traditional mediums, such as
a watercolor, photography, and even pastel drawings. Some traditional processes
can, however, be reversed through processes such as scanning a traditional
technique of printmaking as well as digital manipulation of these images
simultaneously (Tim, 2009).
Three-dimension relief surfaces that could include fabric surfaces, woodcarving, and clay, as well can create effects that are as rich as a two-dimension surface in the
digital world. Photographs that are taken by a digital camera also form part of
the images that are created in the digital era.
Image creation in the digital era is forming images in a developing world and the
creation of images that are concurrent to the upcoming technology. It can be
referred to also as multi-paradigm programming. For instance, this includes the
use of the current applications centric approach in the modification of the
various functionality of a light. In such a process, one needs to use a phone
and open an application and search for the light in a menu. Eventually, one
should access that specific functionality.
Previously, the process requires the tapping of a physical switch and now is seen to require a series of steps. Besides that, in the creation of an object in the digital era, when one has more objects and is most likely to find complications in the applications drop-down menu. These new physical objects created in the digital era are referred to as the hybrid things since they share the best characteristics of the virtual as well as the physical interface. A virtual interface is for the occasional editing as well as learning more about the object. The physical interface, on the other hand, serves as the day to day operations.
Creating an Object in the Information Era
Object creation in the information era presupposes primary programming at a level of
real or true information. It is not the creation of objects at the level of
information or using the various information programming methods as well as
techniques. It includes a focus on the separation of concern only when those
concerns are real and true information and data or information oriented. The
above process utilizes various visualization methods as well as the analysis of
large sets of data that are known mainly for their power as well the unknown
patterns of correlation. As a result, several methods have been used to
investigate the various sets of data that range from multiscale to
multidimensional visualization of the way to the zoom methods as well as
clustering and pan. Object creation in the information era is motivated by the
current trends and ongoing current information. In this object creation method
in the information era, media artists are usually involved. They are, however,
not the only ones that explore this field. The digital archives are beginning
to surround this field as well.
The field primarily deals with the interrelations between social sciences as well
as human and computer interactions. Researchers, however, claim that the nature
of the complications arising from the interrelations between social sciences
and computer-related interactions are so complex, and thoughts show that the
data analysis is too limited (Ross, 2008). Object creation in the information
era uses a visualization approach that is done by allowing their work to be
inspired by the natural happening that could include the formation of various
rocks. It, therefore, makes it easy for us to understand the affordances as
well as the constraints of a particular happening. It forms key ingredients to
the creation of a historical visualization.
People hold on to the various archives that were created in
a particular information era. Such archives give a visual feel and a realistic
view of what happened at a particular time in history (Nadine & Dirk,
2009). Therefore, the objects created in a particular information era are
stored in museums and national archives. We tend to feel they are important to
us and their meaning is not only embedded in particular messages and scenes,
but they also represent their creation time.
Ontological and formal approaches to the
Digital Object
Couclelis (2010) illustrates that in the works presented by Edward Fredkin and Stephen
Wolfram, there is a wide assumption that digital objects are simply bits or
(and) bytes in the fields of ordinal physics in addition to digital ontology.
There are two main concepts that are prevalent in the concept of a digital
ontology. First, the notion that bits are an atomic symbol representing
information state; and another, that the time-based state of progression is a
digital information process (Attila, 2009; Karanasios et al., 2013). The second
argument exemplifies a lengthy historic argument between humanism and cybernetics
(Couclelis, 2010). It is also worthy of considering the arguments of activity
theory in this discussion which is first, relevant to advance more perceptive
theoretical models of ill-defined activities (Karanasios et al., 2013). Second,
important in a way that can be applicable in enlightening the progress of
ontology, and thirdly, that the said ontology might be drawn upon to pave the
way for semantic intensification of digital traces used in extracting logic of
the phenomena.
The pertinent ontologies in this discussion are classified as upper-level
ontologies that allege to explain important concepts as well as relationships
that is realized by means of fields. In contradictory, there are more specific
domain ontologies that are personalized to the prerequisites of certain spheres
of discourse. Hamid & Fernando (2009) offer an extensive outline and
argument of the metaphysical, theoretical, official, and hands-on questions
raised by upper-level ontologies then put forward a number of different arrays
of principles that can be used for their organization. Most pertinent are
variances based on varied understandings of the type of the perceptions
epitomized in ontology in addition the kind of representation and molding more
largely. In most instances, these perceptions are anticipated to openly
characterize matching everyday entities (Jan, 2008). Other ontologies champions
are intellectual/etymological perspective dependable with the twentieth-century
investigative viewpoint, concentrating on the semantics of computer language
terms and the means these configuration social identifications of space depict
(Jan, 2008).
With relation to, but dissimilar from Couclelis (2010), the latter ontologies are
now built on the evidence of rational semantics, a methodology to
three-dimensional cognition embodied in the work of insightful linguists for
the example described by Fernando (2009). There are additional ontologies as well
as ontological sketches with a variegated approach and others strive to
incorporate the all-inclusive scale of experimental authenticity as seen from a
spatial viewpoint, comprising intellectual characteristics such as societal
and experimental. These suggestions are continuously categorized, comprising of
‘levels,’ ‘worlds,’ ‘realities” or ‘spaces’ and they have a tendency to be legitimately
analogous in value. As Couclelis (2010) discusses, ontology consists of an idea
of a hierarchy containing scientific space, somatic being, socioeconomic space,
communication space, and experiential space. Dappert (2013) ontology consists
of a physical, practical, natural, premeditated, and community levels. Karen
(2008) projected levels are somatic, discernible, article world, societal, and
intellectual agents reality. There have been numerous struggles along the same
lines, all of which are valuable and instinctively plausible but they have a
the tendency to lack a prescribed rationalization for the description and
imperative of the echelons, over and above a methodical technique for ascending
and descending the ladder (Aleida, 2008). The structure is shown in this case
takes a much-altered approach, propositioning a constructivist line of attack
that produces a pecking order founded on a disciplined retrenchment of semantic
information (Deanna, 2003). Theoretically, the style is contiguous to the performer
and realist viewpoints of knowledge that have a tendency to be impartial on the
the issue of outside genuineness but center in its place on looking for the most
creative explanations of specific problems.
It is not possible to have a comprehensive description of digital objects without
creating the relationship between the preservation of a computing environment and
digital objects. The preservation of computing environments where the digital
objects are executed is accomplished through metadata. Metadata can be further
defined as information regarding an object that is required to bring about that
object. On the other hand, Digital Preservation Metadata is the nature of the
evidence that must be used to preserve digital objects well and in the
continuing to be used in the future.
Core metadata for the digital preservation of every type of digital object is
specified in the PREMIS Data Dictionary (PREMIS Data Dictionary version 2.2), a
de-facto standard. Core metadata is the metadata that must be in use in almost
all preservation repositories (Hui, 2012), instead of submission or content
specific metadata meant for niche applications. Metadata around digital objects’
computing environments should always be preserved in one place with the digital
objects as a component of their core metadata (Lawrence, 1999; Lynne, 2009). On
top of giving a description of an Object’s Representation Information, other
kinds of computing environments (Birger, 2000), software, for instance, can themselves
be the main digital objects of preservation, as we often see in computer games.
They may also assume the function of a software Agent in a preservation Event,
and they may need a detailed metadata account for those reasons.
Blogs, videos, photos and other forms of social media generated by the user online
contains a wide source of individual experiences or what we can call “digital
traces” (Hui, 2012). The process of developing digital objects in the web space
begins by understanding human behavior. However, there has been little or no
use of digital traces to give an understanding of human behavior (Fernando,
2009). This process can be challenging for the most part, but recently links
have been made using ontological approaches to tagging and link digital traces,
with much progress into the ontology models. In order to understand the
creation of digital objects with more clarity, it is more helpful to begin by
understanding the role of digital traces in shaping human behavior (Ross,
2008).
The diverse Perspectives
The interaction of humans with digital objects is usually and relatively an
understudied aspect of human versus computers interactions (Claudio, 2007). The
role of digital objects in day-to-day activities increases gradually.
Studies have shown that the ubiquity of digital objects tends to hide their
potential significance. Various related factors do hide the physical existence
of the various digital objects to start with, the virtual aspect of a digital
object usually is the one that we see and relate as well as interact with. Storage
media on which there is a physical inscription of the digital objects are
usually enclosed in a housing that normally hides those digital objects from
the user (Benoit & Hussey, 2011).
Secondly, the virtual aspect of the object can be perceived in many layers of abstraction
and is obtained away from the physical aspect. A computer design could
encourage the interpretation of the digital objects as not being real. Thirdly,
those physically inscribed objects that usually compose a digital object could
appear as not real since a human eye cannot read them. These factors are
related and combined to enable as well as to encourage the user to ignore
everything apart from the virtual aspect of a digital object in their day-to-day
interactions with these objects.
The claims that several users consider those digital objects to be unreal are
supported by the recent work conducted on the interactions between computers
and human beings. In various studies, that have been conducted to investigate the
perception of people on digital possessions present in cloud storage, there
were findings that the feelings of people about these digital possessions would
be perfectly described as either uncertainty or uneasiness. Studies also show
that possession does difficult especially when the thing possessed has no
geographical locale in the user’s experience (Neil & Williams, 2009).
Various scholars in the different fields have done the engagement of the materiality of
the digital objects from various and different perspectives. Many, however, do
acknowledge the complex nature of those objects. The study of material culture
also depicts that identity construction can be tied closely to the consumption
and various material objects. It has been observed that one and the most
important way that we relate to each other as well as to ourselves is through
the material objects. Virtual reality is usually very immersive, and it means
that this is a medium whose main purpose is to disappear. This act proves to be
difficult when it comes to the apparatus required by the virtual reality.
To create what could be referred to as a sense of presence, visual reality should
come as close as possible to our day-to-day visual experiences. Its graphic space
should be in a continuous process and should be full of objects. The logic of
transparent closeness are usually at per with the non-immersive digital
graphics. Digital graphics have become consistently popular as well as
lucrative and are continuously leading to a new definition of the computer. In
the 20th century, computers were regarded primarily as numerical engines as
well as word processors. Today, computers are regarded as image processors,
devices for reworking photographs as well as holding videoconferences and
providing special effects and animation for film and television. The desktops which replaced the command line
interface assimilates the computer to the physical desktop as well as
materials.
The transparent computer interface is a manifestation of the need to deny a
mediated character of digital technology. With digital technology, we have
moved beyond the meditation and assert the unique nature of the present
technological moment. Many people believe that virtual reality completes as well as
overcomes the history of the media (Thomasson, 2007). For the immediacy of
computer graphics to be fully understood, it is vital to grasp the various ways
in which painting, film, photography as well as television, have tried to
satisfy the same desire. Automating the method of linear perspective is one way
that can lead the achievement of linear transparency. This automaticity quality
has been associated with the technology of the obscure of the camera and hence
to film, photography and television as well. The subsequent invention of
photography over the years has led to the perfection of the linear perspective
(Neil & Williams, 2009).
Digital graphics create various images in perspective but also applies to the
perspective the rigor of linear algebra as well as projective geometry. The
projective images that are generated from computers are considered
mathematically perfect. Computer graphics express color, shading, and
illumination as well as various mathematical terms. However, they are less
successful than perspective. In perspective painting, computer graphics lays
several claims to the real. It does seem to be appealing to the Cartesian
proposition.
Digital graphics automatic nature implies that there is an affinity for photography. In the case of photography, the automatic process is both chemical and mechanical. Digital graphics and images are as a result of the works of humans and its agency is often delayed so far from the drawing act that it seems to disappear.
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Further reading
- The Quest for Defining Digital Affordances — the next step in this series: defining what digital objects let agents do.
- Applying Affordances on Objects on the Digital World — putting affordance theory to work on digital objects.
- The Agentic Web & MCP hub — where this line of research eventually led.
2 responses to “The Quest for Defining the Digital Object”
Really interesting. Nice work!
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