Building on yesterday’s post, there can be a pull towards digitalization as access to compute, technology, prediction, etc. gets easier and cheaper. But don’t blindly follow that pull at the expense of the physical.

Digitalization without careful consideration of the existing analog/physical processes can leave huge amounts of stored knowledge on the table. Everything from location to human interaction should be carefully considered. For example, if you digitalize a process, and replace a phone call to a vendor with an automated message/notification, you still transfer the information. But you lose any personal connection that may have been involved in the phone call. If you digitalize your application process for a building permit, and run into an edge case on the website, you cannot talk to someone to get it figured out. What’s worse, even if you try to talk to someone, their institutional knowledge is no longer applicable because their workflow has been abstracted away by the digital process. Whereas before, someone at the front desk could have shown you who to call or which supplemental form to fill out, that isn’t the case with digital without very careful design.