postdigital

Postdigital is a term used in media studies, arts, design, and cultural theory to describe a condition in which digital technologies are so embedded in everyday life that the boundary between digital and non-digital experiences has become blurred. Rather than signaling the end of digital technologies, the postdigital condition emphasizes that computation, connectivity, and data are pervasive across social practices, infrastructures, and environments, shaping culture, work, learning, and politics in ways that are often invisible or taken for granted.

In practice, postdigital approaches examine how digital and analogue materials coexist and interact; they study the social, economic, and ethical implications of datafication, platform capitalism, surveillance, and AI; and they investigate design and creative processes that integrate code, sensors, and tactile media with traditional crafts and pedagogy. The concept is used across disciplines to critique techno-optimism and to foreground questions of authorship, agency, accessibility, and power.

Critiques note that the term can be vague or aspirational and risk erasing ongoing digital inequalities. Proponents emphasize empirical context, acknowledging that different communities experience digital integration very differently. In education, postdigital thought often informs teaching practices that blend online and face-to-face modalities; in art and music, it foregrounds hybridity and the material effects of computation.