W30 - Initial Exploration of Digitalization

Last year I set a goal to study areas related to digitalization. Recently I started reading Professor Mai’s "Digital Leap," which serves as my introduction to the field of digitalization.

Here are some thoughts on what digitalization is. What’s the difference between doing digital enablement and doing IT? How does digitalization differ from informatization?

The first question is easier to answer; a close approximation is the difference between doing IT and fixing computers.

For the second question, based on my current understanding: informatization centers on information-driven dashboards and interfaces, while digitalization centers on knowledge-driven solutions and decisions. Informatization typically delivers a human–machine interface and, compared with digitalization, does not provide ready-made solutions—you must set the strategy and make the decisions yourself.

For example, consider stock trading: the individual and institutional approaches are completely different. Individuals generally operate within an informatization framework, making judgments based on market data, moving averages, and other information. Institutions (in the West) largely operate within a digitalization framework, doing quantitative trading based on models and data, with most trading decisions executed by machines.

How to understand information versus knowledge? I happened to read a blog post about knowledge graphs on the internal network a few weeks ago that explained this well.

To reach artificial intelligence, one must cross the chasm from information to knowledge. Information is merely a description of external objective facts; knowledge is the induction and summarization of those facts from information. Knowledge is therefore the network of relationships built upon information.

A knowledge graph establishes links between pieces of information and supports deeper natural language understanding. For example, on Meituan search, if a user searches for "praying for blessings," the text alone treats it simply as an activity, and this shallow understanding won’t improve search results. If you combine a graph that links "praying for blessings - place - temple," that relationship information can help improve search performance.