digital object

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

A digital object, in RB3’s presentation of Yuk Hui, is a technical entity whose coherence depends on metadata, links, interfaces, formats, protocols and access within a networked milieu. It is more than an inert self-sufficient file. The proposal preserves this relational account without treating every file as continuously changing, denying material infrastructure or identifying technical individuation with biological life and its own felt stakes.

Explanation

The defining passage makes updating, copying, linking and reinterpretation ways an object’s identity can be maintained across a milieu. This is a philosophical account of technical coherence, not permission to alter archival source bytes or a claim that every stored object must change to remain valid. A specific preserved file can still require stable identifiers and exact custody.

RB3 distinguishes metabolically reactivated biological constraints from technical constraints distributed through archives and infrastructures. Protocol revisions and interfaces participate in reindividuation without making the resulting system alive. The native Hui references retain this lineage rather than importing an unprovided complete digital ontology.

Storage, transmission, labor and use remain concrete conditions of the object’s efficacy. The proposal therefore rejects an immaterial self-subsisting data entity while preserving differences among codes, practices and devices. Relational maintenance neither guarantees ethical legitimacy nor shows that a digital object experiences the consequences of the relations sustaining it.

Scope and attribution

Preserve Hui attribution, material milieu and exact-source custody requirements.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Hui’s relational digital entity remains materially supported and distinct from metabolically maintained life.

Occurrence locators: 26, 27, 28.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Hui digital-object individuation is distinguished from artificial vulnerability and self-regard.