Del dibujo y de los datos: Continuidad en el entorno digital

Abstract

The text analyzes the cultural transition from the trace to the algorithm within today’s data-driven culture. It argues that contemporary society not only accumulates digital information but also structures it through algorithmic infrastructures that model reality. From McLuhan’s «global village» to the era of big data and the «Fourth Industrial Revolution», computational systems have transformed perception, knowledge production, and aesthetic experience. Within this regime of computational formatting, drawing does not disappear; rather, it is reconfigured. The trace is understood as a cognitive technology capable of externalizing and organizing invisible relations, a function that the algorithm expands through formalized and automated processes. The diagram acts as a mediation between the two, consolidating structures that calculation then executes. Thus, the shift from drawing to algorithm does not imply an ontological rupture but a structural continuity: code extends the relational logic of the trace within the digital environment.