This paper analyses two closely related but different concepts, digitization and digitalization, first discussed in an encyclopedia article by Brennen and Kreiss in 2016. Digital Humanities mainly uses the first term, whereas business and economics tend to use the second to praise the process of the digitalization of society. But digitalization was coined as a critical concept in 1971 by Wachal and is sometimes used in post-colonial studies. Consequently, humanist scholars are invited to avoid the “path of least resistance” when using digitalization, and to explore its critical potential. The paper concludes by considering the effect of the digitalization perspective and by expressing author’s point of view on the issue.