Digital survey: from new technology to everyday use, a knowledge path and challenge for scholars

Abstract

Which is the meaning of researching and working in the field of the digital survey at the beginning of the XXIth century? Are the scholars and professionals planning procedures and strategies or just producing an enormous amount of digital data which destiny will be a colossal data loss? Starting from a reflection about “where we are” after 20 years of active digital survey for built heritage this article will try to trace some points about how to start and to plan digital survey intervention when the task is not merely professional and when the new survey bases are supposed to be used in a “liquid” context. From the massive machines and procedures of the XXth century, producing quite “light” amount of data, in the last two decades these tools passed to be lightweight in their hardware, while the amount of gathered data increased continuously, in what it seems an unstoppable process. But massive data gathering maybe it is not knowledge by itself and the information society, especially in its next evolutions, will need contents and versatile data to support and link our present to the heritage values. A specific reflection on the value of digital survey and procedures will be held here not in the pretention of finding a stable paradigm but in the will of stimulating the discussion in a field often tempted by simply technical solutions.