“Digital Studies is an interdisciplinary field that evolved out of film and television studies, communication studies, and cultural studies. Its vast scope spans from cyberpunk subculture of the past to data, algorithms, and AI ethics in the present. Digital cultures surround us, embodied in our smartphones, Instagram posts, and VR designs.

For historians and philosophers, nothing is not a part of digital studies since all texts and images we see today are mediated by something digital. Despite its broadness, the field can be traced back to a simple beginning—an origin rooted in the latin word “digit,” which means a “finger” that points. In 0 and 1, we find such pointers. They represent real-world things that can be understood by numerical machines. This ongoing exchanges between humans and machines shapes our understanding self, daily existence, and the possibilities of tomorrow. 

Digital studies has become an increasingly important field because at the heart of it lies the ancient question: what defines as a human in the worlds of digits?”