Digitizing Culture in the New World

Nusa Dua - In the symposium 4 with the discussed theme “Culture in the New Digital World”, it raised for discussion to explore exchange of experiences in cultural sector. It is considered necessary as every country is currently facing the consequences of digital world development which is trying to support, conserve and include culture as a sustainable development sector. The speakers shared their views on how to deal with digital era.

The first speaker was Google Cultural Institute Operation Head Luisella Mazza. Under her leadership Google moves to devise technology to develop the world’s culture. One of the projects Google carried out was establishing the three dimension digital technology for art and cultural products such as painting and so forth. She referred to a three dimension museum as an example of project discussed in the symposium. With the assistance of such technology, visitors will experience easier access to every collection in the museum.

Appeared as the second speaker was Europeana Excecutive Director Jill Cousins who shared her experience to all participants in developing the Europeana culture heritage digitizing, to make it accessible through online media.

The third speaker was Ahn Kwang-han, President and CEO of MBC Korea. Kwang Han told his experience in supporting the development of South Korean Culture to become gobally accepted trough Digital Media City (DMC). DMC actively facilitates the youth to work in cultural field, so that South Korea is able to develop its culture all over the world by organizing festivals such as Korea’s DMC festival which eventually influence other countries’ culture like K-Pop.

The fourth speaker in this symposium was Belva Devara, Founder and CEO of Ruangguru.com. Departed from education discrepancy he felt in Indonesia, he began to build a site called Ruangguru.com to assist education field in Indonesia. Ruangguru.com is a site to reach for personal teacher for student and curriculum which consist of curriculum for play group to university.

The discussant for the symposium was Yanuar Nugroho, Deputy Chief of Staff for Analysis and Oversigth of Strategic on Social, Culture and Ecological Affairs at the Executive Office of the President. Yanuar discribed Indonesia’s development in entering the digital era. With the increasing usage of social media, Indonesian Government provides various digital/internet-based media which can be easily accessible by public. The digital era gives positive effect such as ease of access to information and increase of economy, in addition to negative effect such miss information, cultural destruction, etc.

Cultural digitalization is a media that may connect people around the world wirelessly. In fact, , digital world is proven to support the implementation of in cultural diplomacy as.

The presentation from the speaker was a true evidence that digital world is an inevitable stage for today’s people to experience. Cultural digitalization is actually a system of collection and dissemination of information regarding cultural products aimed for people around the world. (Penni Patmawati)