ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Work, Employment and Organizations
This article is part of the Research TopicOrganizations between Continuity and Disruption – The Organization and Management of Perpetual Change in Times of DigitalizationView all 8 articles
Sense-Making as Digitalization. Measuring, counting, and calculating as fundamental processes of digital ‘Bildung’
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institut für Flugsysteme, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Neubiberg, Germany
- 2Munich University of the Federal Armed Forces, Neubiberg, Germany
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A more precise definition of the concept of digitalisation therefore seems desirable. With the aim of such a clarification, the following will proceed both conceptually and analytically as well as historically and empirically. Fundamental aspects of the social shift from communication to information processing, from facts to data, from true nature to possible virtuality, from face-to-face sociality to digital habitualisation, from human to digital intelligence are presented along historical examples in their development and at the same time examined more closely in their conceptual-systematic context. The focus here is on the practices of counting, calculating and measuring, whose gradual differentiation from communication enables the improbable process of the social implementation of an operationally meaningful but at the same time completely referenceless semiosis. Their social and individual cultivation presupposes specific organisational and pedagogical developments that are typical of modern society and lead to the development of modern subjectivity.
Keywords: sense-making, semiosis, calculation, Digtalization, Measurement
Received: 28 Dec 2024; Accepted: 29 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Manhart. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sebastian Manhart, sebastian.manhart@unibw.de
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