foreign the constantly evolving digital age is transforming every aspect of Our Lives from the way we buy our clothes food and books to how we watch and listen to music and films study history or perform artistically while this revolution has greatly enhanced our world it's also created new challenges ranging from how we access and store information to issues surrounding intellectual property data security and privacy the Arts and Humanities research Council has therefore identified digital Transformations as a priority area Professor Andrew Prescott is chair of digital Humanities at King's College London and Leadership fellow for ahrc's digital Transformations theme well I think we've all become very familiar with the way in which we're using digital Technologies to increase access to cultural heritage to explore books sounds films in new and different ways there's a feeling that really we need to now start thinking about moving on to the next stage which is looking at the way in which these Technologies can help us develop completely new ways of thinking about and engaging with the Arts and Humanities and with cultural heritage in particular to actually come up with new types of vision as to the way in which Scholars can approach this material and that's the heart of the thinking of legitimate Transformations theme as historian Andrew is Keen to establish current digital revolution has any similarities to other transformative periods in the past such as the printing and Industrial Revolutions a parallel is frequently drawn between what's happening now and the arrival of print in the 15th century if you look at what bibliographers many historical bibliographers are saying they're suggesting that actually the arrival of print wasn't such a immediate Game Changer as maybe we thought and that it took a very long time for the modern distinction between manuscript and print to really work through in a big way I think it's actually interesting to look at the Industrial Revolution from that point of view because I think we tend to think of the Industrial Revolution a bit like it was in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games a man with a big tall hat comes along waves a stick and all these chimneys appear but again it was actually a much more patchy complex regionalized process is actually extra ordinarily difficult to pin down what the factors that made for growth were how that growth worked and so I think it's very interesting to historicize something of our present experience and again I think that's something that the Arts Humanities can bring to bear on those debates that we could actually suggest that some of the more extreme statements made by techno enthusiasts are ones that in the light say of historical knowledge should be challenged I think that might actually then feed through into the way in which you're thinking about economically how you're handling some of the new digital technologies that are emerging because the in as our main source of information for news entertainment and study Andrew says that the Arts and Humanities have a major contribution to make in helping to decide how material is presented and accessed in terms of study for instance information provided on the web can often be overly simplistic out of date incorrect or biased this is actually one of the more rescue but very interesting areas of well both Humanities and computer science research there's a sort of strong crossover often there isn't the kind of theoretical and critical quality that we might look for in artsy Humanities research and we need to bring that more to Bear the other big issue is the commercialization the commodification of the web and I think we might feel that we've just gone through a sort of golden age where a great deal of stuff was available and we're moving towards an age where it's going to start to be much more fragmented and much more commercially controlled this ahrc theme is also linked to the research council's UK digital economy theme which is looking at the impact of digital Technologies on society culture the economy and our communities this multi-disciplinary approach is reflected in many research projects that are already underway one area that for example interests me very much is the role of 3D printing 3D printers are becoming increasingly commonplace and are being used for example to create spare parts for machines even in medical science for creating for example spare hips for hip replacements what interests me is the implications that sort of Technology can have for cultural heritage there was a wonderful Exhibition at the Victorian Albert Museum called Industrial Revolution 2.0 where 3D printers had been used to create new types of art objects which were placed around the museum so as to provide a commentary on objects in the museum and that again seems to me a very good indicator as to completely new types of engagements which are starting to become available one of my current enthusiasms is an illustration of the sort of way in which boundaries could be changed by new technologies it's around the idea of bioconductive inks which group at the Royal College of Arts have been working on it's an ink that conducts electricity so instead of having a switch on the wall you could have a painting of a switch on the wall and touch the painting of the switch and it would switch the light on and off I mean that's interesting just at the level of art but I work particularly a great deal on the history of manuscripts and I start to wonder what happens if you could have a manuscript that for example could trigger sound in that way could you hear what sound the poem makes could you connect it across in different ways those are the sorts of things that I think are very interesting to explore why that example particularly fascinates me is that it's something that's come out of the work on the Digital Arts that could feed through into thinking about Humanities in in a way that changes the sort of material that Humanity Scholars might work with so the digital Transformations that society and the economy are undergoing at the moment go so much further than simply just putting information online Andrew says it's essential that the role of the Arts and Humanities is seen as a vital part as a process of how we Embrace and adapt to change I think what it comes back to at the end is that part of our capital in this country is a cultural capital just as important as the capital that's tied up in Railway infrastructure and Airlines and all the other things and the reason why digital Technologies are so important is that they give us new ways of unlocking developing and making available and exploiting that cultural capital that we've got and one of the very interesting areas I think one of the great success stories in Britain has been in recent years the creative Industries and how we exploit the potential interplay between creative Industries and Humanities research I think that's something that comes out very strongly from this team and would benefit from that sort of investment foreign