MoMA has announced a fascinating acquisition to their collection this morning: @.

The MoMA blog outlines the full rationale behind @‘s honorable new status, but in sum:

The appropriation and reuse of a pre-existing, even ancient symbol—a symbol already available on the keyboard yet vastly underutilized, a ligature meant to resolve a functional issue (excessively long and convoluted programming language) brought on by a revolutionary technological innovation (the Internet)—is by all means an act of design of extraordinary elegance and economy.

As the post goes on to explain, Ray Tomlinson (of BBN), who is credited with developing the earliest email system, is said to have chosen ‘@’ for ‘its strong locative sense.’ The rise of location based services and place based networks has elevated its status even more. @ has become more than a functional address designation, but rather a mark of identity – the “I’m talkin’ to you” of the digital world.

This broadening of meaning points up a related conceptual shift: DIGITAL.

Because we’re neck-deep in ‘digital’ issues all day, every day here at LocaModa, it’s hard to track the evolution of a term when it’s continually mutating. That said, over the past few years, particularly in the advertising and DOOH arenas, ‘digital’ has taken on a far heftier meaning than as a simple binary to ‘analog.’ Digital projects are now expected to not only recognize their audience, but also react and respond. Oddly enough, digital has has taken a joyride down the binary spectrum and now connotes a near-human sense of interactivity and engagement.

And, frankly, if you’re still viewing digital as a counterpoint to print, your audience may no longer be able to discern the difference.

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