The "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development" adopted by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China emphasized: "Promote the integration of culture and science and technology, promote digital intelligence empowerment and informatization transformation of cultural construction, and develop new cultural formats." This strategic deployment has a profound grasp of the development pulse of the digital intelligence era and points the way forward for improving the quality and efficiency of public cultural services. Public cultural services are an important carrier to protect people's basic cultural rights and meet people's spiritual and cultural needs. At present, the integration of culture and technology has reached unprecedented depth and breadth, injecting strong momentum into the digital and intelligent development of public cultural services and improving quality and efficiency, making it an important support for new cultural formats.
1. The inevitable logic of “the integration of culture and technology” empowering public cultural services
Culture and technology have always been mutually reinforcing. Culture gives value orientation to technological innovation, and technology provides strong support for cultural development. The deep integration of culture and technology is profoundly reshaping public cultural services, which contains profound theoretical logic, profound historical implications and distinctive characteristics of the times.
This is the practical requirement of Marx’s theory of spiritual production. In Marx's view, human beings are conscious beings, and spiritual production is the most free and creative activity of human beings. In the union of free people, people promote the improvement of spiritual productivity through the development of material productivity, and achieve spiritual liberation on the basis of everyone sharing spiritual materials. The development, co-construction and sharing in Marx’s spiritual production theory are intrinsically consistent with public cultural services in the new era. This indicates that in order to achieve high-quality development of public cultural services, it must be combined with the most advanced productivity and promote the integration of culture and technology.
This is the inevitable development of the public cultural service construction of the Communist Party of China. Our party has always focused on protecting people's cultural rights and interests and promoting public cultural services from scratch and from weak to strong. From running schools, running newspapers, performing plays, and broadcasting in the base areas, to establishing cultural centers, libraries, and cinemas after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and then implementing projects such as "every village access" radio and television, rural movie screenings, and farmhouses after the reform and opening up, the spiritual needs of the people have been initially met. In the new era, the integration of science and technology and culture not only continues the party's concept of "culture benefiting the people", but also injects "intelligence core" into public cultural services, allowing the people to enjoy high-quality spiritual and cultural life.
This is an objective requirement to meet the new expectations of the people’s spiritual and cultural life. At present, the spiritual and cultural needs of the masses have changed from "have or not" to "good or not", "sufficient", "equal and unequal". Traditional one-way, fixed and modular public cultural services are no longer able to meet the new needs of convenience, immersion, personalization and sharing. This objectively promotes the deep integration of culture and technology, promotes the transformation of public cultural services from one-way supply to multiple interactions, from static preservation to dynamic innovation, from modular segmentation to three-dimensional integration, and from the urban-rural divide to fair sharing.
2. “Integration of culture and technology” empowers practical innovation in public cultural services
In the new era, the key to promoting the deep integration of culture and technology to empower public cultural services is to promote the precise connection between cutting-edge technology and demand, and to promote the breakthrough development of public cultural service efficiency, supply model, and experience perception.
Activate innovation momentum and promote the "contemporary" presentation of public cultural service resources. The integration of culture and technology is essentially a two-way rush of humanistic spirit and innovative genes. When digital technology collides with public culture, its in-depth translation and formal reconstruction can often inspire dynamic and innovative expressions. Emerging forms such as digital libraries, virtual reality exhibitions, and AI cultural scene reproduction are relying on the power of science and technology to enhance the expressiveness and appeal of public culture, promote the mapping and visualization of cultural content, and turn the obscure "cold culture" into an vivid, rich, and three-dimensional "empathic experience" in people's lives.
Empower the integration of reality and reality to achieve an "immersive" upgrade of public cultural service scenes. Scenes are an important carrier of public cultural services, and digital intelligence technology is using its disruptive power to continuously unlock new public cultural service scenarios such as the resonance of multiple subjects, the symbiosis of human-computer interaction, and the integration of virtual and reality. This kind of scene relies on multi-dimensional sensory integration and situational design to build a highly immersive experience field and achieve the dual extension of people's senses and emotional awareness. The public's immersive interaction with art works, historical scenes, and cultural heritage can bring new spiritual satisfaction and pleasure, and achieve an upgrade from a casual "shallow check-in" to a lingering "in-depth experience".
Accurately match demand and build an interactive "intelligent" ecology of supply and demand for public cultural services. Technological innovation promotes the transformation of public cultural services from resource-driven to data-driven. With the help of digital technology, we will promote the upgrade of public cultural resources from a unified offline "dish-style" supply to an intelligent platform-based and personalized "a la carte" service, achieving precise docking of supply and demand. Through the dynamic portrait of user groups through big data, a closed-loop governance mechanism of "data-analysis-decision-feedback" is formed, allowing public cultural services to realize from flood irrigation to precise drip irrigation, from passive reception to active customization, thus promoting the "intelligent flow" of cultural resources on the demand side.
Relying on digital technology, public cultural services can collaboratively participate in "co-creative" development. In public cultural service activities in the digital era, the public is both an audience and a participant. The participation of social forces can not only stimulate cultural vitality, but also is an important means to consolidate the inclusiveness of public cultural services. Public cultural services have shifted from "government arrangements" to "government guidance + social co-creation" to stimulate people's enthusiasm for co-creation and truly realize the participation and co-creation of public cultural services. People can use AI tools to achieve self-expression and cultural co-construction based on their own hobbies and interests and become "cultural makers", upgrading cultural consumption to personalized cultural production.
Break through the barriers of time and space and realize the "unbounded" extension of public cultural service coverage. Digital technology has wide coverage and strong permeability, and can deconstruct the physical space boundaries of public cultural services, extend cultural services to the cloud, and become a "technical base" for cultural benefits to the people. Digitalization can enhance the universality and inclusiveness of public cultural services, promote the shift of cultural resources from limited supply to unlimited sharing, and meet the spiritual and cultural needs of all, all-time, all-regions, and all ages. Let the public have “one-click access” to public culture and maximize the accessibility and equalization of public cultural services.
3. The fundamental requirement for “integration of culture and technology” to empower public cultural services
"Integration of culture and technology" empowers the development of public cultural services. It is a systematic change with cultural values as the core and scientific and technological innovation as the support. Only by anchoring the three key aspects of cultural connotation, infrastructure upgrading, and talent innovation drive can we lay a solid foundation for improving the quality and efficiency of public cultural services.
Strengthen the cultural implications of digital public cultural services. The core competitiveness of digital public cultural services is rooted in the in-depth exploration and accurate transmission of cultural connotations, rather than the coolness of technology. In the process of digitalization, it is necessary to prevent culture from being reduced to entertainment content that is fast-paced, has strong visual impact, and focuses on external forms. Instead, it should be firmly based on its own history, culture, national customs, and resource characteristics to enhance the connotative carrying capacity, recognition, and appeal of public cultural services.
Strengthen the effective coverage of digital public cultural service infrastructure. Digital infrastructure is the “highway” for digital public cultural services. In the "integration of culture and technology", we must quickly promote the digital transformation of traditional public cultural places such as libraries and museums, and create digital service platforms. Continue to improve digital coverage in remote areas and establish "digital cultural stations" to ensure smooth accessibility of digital cultural services in rural areas. Carry out digital skills education on a regular basis, improve the digital literacy and digital access capabilities of the entire population, and avoid "suspended" services.
Cultivate comprehensive talents who are adaptable to digital public cultural services. Digital public cultural services have distinct cross-border characteristics, which requires cultivating practitioners with profound value literacy, aesthetic ability, and superb technical skills. It is necessary to break down disciplinary barriers, create a talent training system under the perspective of "digital intelligence and humanities", and cultivate a group of compound talents who understand both culture and technology; at the same time, it is necessary to promote the positive interaction between cultural talents and scientific and technological talents to form an innovation team with complementary advantages.
Entering a new stage of development in the "15th Five-Year Plan", the deep integration of culture and technology will become the core driving force for improving the quality and efficiency of public cultural services. It is necessary to actively adapt to the development trend of digital intelligence and informatization, continuously promote the development of public cultural services in a more inclusive, high-quality, and intelligent direction, promote the common prosperity of the people's spiritual life, and inject strong spiritual power into the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
(The authors are associate professors at the School of Marxism at East China University of Political Science and Law and professors at the Institute of Marxism at Tongji University. This article is a related result of the National Social Science Foundation’s major project “Research on Improving the Cultural Institutional Mechanism to Stimulate the Vitality of National Cultural Innovation and Creation” (Project Number: 24ZDA070).)
