Digitalization is transforming the way culture, knowledge, and humanity’s cultural and historical heritage are transmitted. Let’s explore how, on the occasion of he World Day for Audiovisual Heritage
In an increasingly interconnected world, digital memory has become a fundamental part of human memory, a witness to our progress, inventions, and insights.
This is precisely what the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage reminds us: digital transformation is not only about technological innovation, but also about the preservation of humanity’s legacy.
For UNESCO and many other cultural institutions, audiovisual documents represent an essential part of the world’s cultural heritage, true testimonies of our civilization. Yet they are fragile assets: they can deteriorate, be erased, or become unreadable over time and with technological evolution.
This is why it is essential to digitize, preserve, and make them accessible, ensuring that traces of the past continue to live in the present and the future.
From film to the cloud: the evolution of safeguarding audiovisual heritage
Since the birth of cinema and photography, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, humans began capturing images, emotions, and memories on physical media.
In 1895, the Lumière brothers marked the beginning of modern cinema, and the first photographs on glass plates and celluloid film allowed reality to be captured with unprecedented fidelity. Those black-and-white images laid the foundations of our visual and sound heritage.
Over the decades, technology has transformed the way we produce and preserve moving images: from Charlie Chaplin’s silent films of the 1920s, to the arrival of television and magnetic tapes in the 1950s, to optical media such as CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. Every transition has changed our relationship with storytelling through images.
Anyone who grew up in the 1990s remembers neighborhood video stores, the smell of plastic cases, VHS tapes, and films watched with the family alongside a generous serving of homemade buttered popcorn. An atmosphere that has now almost disappeared: those media, with an average lifespan of just a few decades, have been replaced by streaming and cloud archives. But even digital formats are not eternal: files must be copied, migrated, and protected to avoid disappearing.
That’s why fiber optics and network-based preservation systems are not just technological progress, they are a new form of safeguarding our collective memory.
Beyond cinema: the entire artistic heritage is now on-demand
After 41 years of broadcasting, MTV will shut down its music channels in Europe — news that marks the end of an era for entire generations raised on its music videos. For teenagers of the 1990s and 2000s, it wasn’t just a TV channel but a window onto pop culture, global music, and the visual languages that shaped the imagination of an era.
Today, that role is taken over by digital platforms like Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube, the new protagonists of entertainment. It’s a shift that brings a touch of nostalgia but also tells the story of an inevitable transformation: music, TV programs, and visual content are now consumed on-demand, whenever and wherever we want. A transformation that, thanks to fiber optics and new digital infrastructures, enables access to an immense and ever-evolving audiovisual and sound heritage.
Fiber optics as the highway of digital memory
In this landscape, FTTH fiber technology plays a crucial role in enabling the most advanced digital services. Invisible and ultra-fast, fiber optics transfers in an instant the images and sounds that once traveled kilometers. A stream of light that makes data exchange faster, more stable, and more secure.
Alongside large cloud infrastructures, Edge Data Centers are also spreading, digital hubs distributed across the territory and essential for content storage.
These structures, located at the “edges” of the network, enable local data processing, reduce access times, and ensure efficient and secure preservation. Digital memory is no longer concentrated in a few central servers but lives within a distributed and resilient network.
Open Fiber and the network of the future, serving audiovisual heritage
The crucial role of fiber optics in the development of the country and its communities is becoming increasingly evident. This infrastructure represents not only the foundation for a solid, connected, and sustainable future, but also the backbone of the country’s collective memory – the system that preserves and makes accessible the stories, images, and voices of our time.
Expanding ultra-fast connectivity across Italy means offering equal opportunities for access to the most advanced services: a commitment that looks to the future and simultaneously helps preserve and enhance the national audiovisual heritage.
Once, families gathered on the couch to watch the latest rented movie; today, culture and entertainment flow through the cloud, across streaming platforms.
Discover how we support the country’s innovation and promote the development of a network that connects culture, entertainment, and memory, keeping our history alive.
