What does "digital" mean anyway?

Merriam Webster offers a clear, simple definition of the word “digital”: characterized by electronic and especially computerized technology. At a basic level, this is still true. In recent years, however, the technology industry has transformed the word into an industry buzzword for a bewildering variety of products and strategies.

In the early 2010's, someone coined the the acronym SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) as a good description of what "digital transformation" involves. As broad-based as this sounds, its meaning has now expanded even further to the point where industry forums are rife with debate about a standard definition.

The most useful definition I can devise for a technical layperson reads something like this: describing those products, tools, strategies, and content that directly relate to enabling an organization’s online presence. Examples of core digital technologies according to this definition include social media, web, e-mail, and streaming. In the typical church context, some of the technologies excluded by this definition would be office automation/administration tools (both hardware and software) and financial software since they don’t directly enable online presence.