Digital communication: the long way toward a proper “format”

Digital communication is the most recent ring in a long chain, starting from non verbal communication and gesture, over languages, signs and writing, to print, broadcasting and other media and formats. The idea is to look at the past in order to find out a proper format for the new digital media. New technologies enabling new media and formats, such as virtual reality or multimedia, provide a good opportunity to find out new ways of communication and especially to bring to new life some “lost” formats. Some technologies are (re)enabling (new) communication formats. Today people have the possibility to create digital objects, which is a new class of objects from the ontology point of view, and they can use multimedia technologies and Internet, both providing some powerful tools for communication, but which are not yet very well developed and used. Virtual & enhanced reality also represents a powerful tool for the transfer of information and knowledge, because it allows to transfer information from the usual symbolic way (i.e. reading books) to the possibility to touch nonmaterial things or concepts. By doing so, we will transfer our way to approach information from symbolic to experimental, hands-on. Nowadays, there are different models, different opportunities, and various kinds of communication, e.g., asynchronous and synchronous, mono- and bi-directional, one to one and one to many, many to many, location dependent and independent, immersive and non immersive, interactive and non- interactive, with log and without log, wired and wireless. It is a mixture of different ingredients and we have to reassemble new recipes in order to develop more effective communication. Up to now there is not a proper way to use technological tools, in order to exploit the real advantages of ICT in communication. The only sector, that has probably developed a proper way, is the entertainment and video game sector. This sector found the best way to use technology in order to entertain and to transfer content. The situation we found : a digital world completely empty and dead, looking at some technologies our society is still facing a “library without books”.