If a lion could talk, we would not understand him. The communication of cultural heritage in the digital environment

Abstract

This essay discusses the communication of cultural heritage in the digital environment adopting a broad perspective and highlighting the need to understand the deep meaning of the shift from the traditional to the digital environment. Adapting to the digital environment requires more than selecting a format, a procedure or a piece of software: it is a complex process that involves many different elements and changes our cognitive structures. Therefore, this essay explores the psychological, ethical, political and social dimension of communication before focusing on the technical aspects, on the basis of a fundamental assumption: communication of cultural heritage in the digital environment fails if it avoids asking philosophical questions. We need to deal with standards, formats and technologies, but first of all we need models and theories – rather, a multidimensional vision – if we want to succeed in communicating the cultural heritage.