Digitizing heritage saves a record from fire, flood and war. It also keeps only what was measured — and for a great deal of heritage, the important part was never a property of the object.
An object, a scan, and the split between what survives the copy and what does not.
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Survives the copy
- Appearance, text and sound
- Access from anywhere, for anybody
- Survival of fire, flood and war
Does not survive
- Who is permitted to see it
- When it may be performed
- What being in its presence means
Why the right column is not sentimental: Those are rules held by a community, not properties of an object. A scan cannot capture them because they were never in the thing being scanned — and once the copy is published, the community that held them no longer decides.
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Real-world examples you can name
Digitizing heritage collections — Google Arts & Culture from 2011; Notre-Dame laser scans used after the 2019 fire
Museums and monuments are photographed and laser-scanned at high resolution and published online. Detailed scans of Notre-Dame made before the fire informed its reconstruction — digitization as preservation, not just access.
Who it affected: People who will never travel to the collection, and conservators rebuilding what burned.
The da Vinci surgical robot — US approval 2000
A surgeon operates instruments through a console rather than directly; the system filters hand tremor and scales movement. It is teleoperated, not autonomous — the classic example of a robot that augments rather than replaces.
Who it affected: Patients receiving less invasive surgery, and surgeons retraining for it.
Agbogbloshie e-waste site, Accra — scrapyard cleared July 2021
A scrapyard where imported electronics were stripped and cables burned to recover copper, releasing lead and dioxins. It became the standard example of e-waste exported from rich countries to poor ones. Authorities demolished much of the site in 2021; the trade moved rather than stopped.
Who it affected: Workers and nearby residents exposed to heavy metals and smoke.
The real question: It is not whether to digitize. It is who holds the copy, who may publish it, and whether the community it came from can still say no.
How this is tested — heritage questions reward an answer about control, and almost every student writes one about preservation. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — structured question
- Part b: explain a concern about digitizing cultural material
- Part c: evaluate a digitization project
Paper 2 — source-based question
- Q2: explain a community's objection in a source
- Q4: synthesise sources on access and ownership
The trap: “it preserves it, so it is good”: Preservation is the easy half. Say who ends up holding the copy and what the original holders can no longer decide.
Explain one reason why a community may object to its heritage being digitized.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Evaluate a project to digitize a museum's collection and publish it online.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.