Philosophy of Digital Man and Digital Society - 2024
The Formation of Values of the Digital Individual and Digital Society in the Context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Evolution of Philosophical Ideas from “Digital Humanities” to Digital Philosophy, Digital Economy, and Digital Management
The impact of digitalization on the formation of value orientations during the Fourth Industrial Revolution is becoming increasingly significant, as we find ourselves in a digital age characterized by algorithms, bits, big data, and the reformatting of the physical world.
We seek to explore the development of value orientations within the framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, examining the concepts of digital society, digital individual, and digital culture, and their influence on humanity, consciousness, worldview, culture, and identity.
The digital society not only alters what we do but also reshapes who we are and who we are to become. This new technological revolution affects the values we possess, the hierarchical structures that are established, and the ways in which human capabilities expand. Digital technologies push the boundaries of longevity, health, cognitive abilities, and potential in ways once considered fantastical, necessitating the formation of a concept of social development as a dynamic system within the context of governance and administration.
Today, humanity must ponder how to respond to new phenomena such as extended lifespans, "designer babies," and the extraction of information from human memory, among others. This indicates that the world has entered a new stage of radical change, marking a significant juncture in the history of human development.
The advanced technologies driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution are fundamentally rooted in the digital capabilities of the Third Industrial Revolution, having established new value orientations within the smart society. These values are founded upon groundbreaking innovations, including:
- Artificial intelligence;
- Robotics;
- Additive manufacturing;
- Neurotechnology;
- Biotechnology;
- Virtual and augmented reality;
- New materials;
- Energy technologies.
In the digital world, the primary task for humanity is to learn how to manage these complex technologies that influence both the individual and the surrounding world. Consequently, it is essential to alter our attitude toward digital technologies by cultivating new digital values—digital culture, digital awareness, digital thinking, and a digital worldview. A deeper understanding is needed regarding how digital technologies affect humanity and values, how individuals implement them, and how they shape the conceptualization of a smart society amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
We investigate the influence of digitalization on the transformation of values during the Fourth Industrial Revolution through a combination of methods—axiological, synergetic, and cultural-creative—necessary for a profound understanding of the essence of digital technologies. The axiological method, as a means of examining the values of digital society, encompasses a set of principles, norms, rules, expectations, goals, institutions, and incentives that guide our values. The formation of digital values influences:
- The expansion of human capabilities;
- The application of innovations in everyday life.
Digital technologies reflect the values, goals, and compromises of society, and the more influential they are, the greater the necessity to comprehend their implications. Frequently, the digital economy itself drives the choice of technologies that are capable of fostering growth, supporting innovation, and necessitating implementation. These values are assessed for their impact on society within the context of the development of project-oriented business concepts and the economy.
The influence of digitalization on the formation of digital values amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in the context of uncertainty, stochasticity, information asymmetry, and sustainable development, is realized through the implementation of information and computer technologies.
The synergetic method aids in uncovering the challenges associated with integrating digital constructs into management systems and adaptive management techniques, fostering flexible approaches in the utilization of the digital economy. Synergetic methodology, as a framework for understanding complex dissipative structures and systems evolving within a specific existential space and shaped by social entropy, embodies both destructive and constructive elements that require self-organization, navigating chaos, and overcoming energy dissipation.
This methodology facilitates the transcendence of chaos, entropy, uncertainty, unpredictability, unstructuredness, and disorder within the social, economic, and cultural processes of digital civilization, addressing various bifurcation points in the quest for an attractor (a focal point) in the intricate digital society, where this attractor may be represented by new digital technologies, the emerging digital society, individuals, culture, consciousness, worldview, and elite groups.
New digital values represent a way of thinking in terms of complex systems, necessitating the formation of a new digital culture and the development of thought processes aligned with complex systems that can adapt to changes in the environment. The influence of digitalization on the formation of digital values during the Fourth Industrial Revolution emerges as a complex adaptive system, framed within the methodology of cultural creativity, underpinned by the cultural value dimensions of the digital age.
As technologies are socially embedded within the digital realm, they bear the responsibility for shaping the priorities of societal and cultural values. Unfortunately, integrating cultural values into technological development is not always straightforward. This can only be achieved within the context of corporate ethics and culture, enhancing social responsibility and developing a concept of administrative management amid the rapid evolution of technologies, stochasticity, and adaptation to change.
Even in contexts where risks are present that are not always foreseeable—given that not all technologies are “programmable”—it is essential to secure digital technologies. For instance, it remains unclear how to safeguard blockchain technologies from their use in criminal activities or how to mitigate the ecological damage caused by other digital technologies. Consequently, companies should not only focus on the development of digital technologies but also on their implementation, the role of digital technologies in socially responsible business practices, and socially responsible processes. To this end, a digital culture and values reflective of humanity and society as socially responsible entities must be cultivated.
The diversity of manifestations of the digital world during the Fourth Industrial Revolution gains considerable relevance, as we witness significant revolutionary changes across all facets of human activity that are transforming modes of work and interaction. These changes occur rapidly because the world is evolving not geometrically but linearly, demanding systematic and structured thinking, agile management, the organization of information, cognitive reloading, swift responses to societal changes, and prompt decision-making.
Daniel Levitin observes that systemic thinking enables the application of appropriate solutions with minimal effort; however, this necessitates the presence of an adequate digital culture. The digital revolution leads to the evolution of the digital economy and digital management, founded on paradigm shifts in economics, business, society, consciousness, and human worldview.
Digitalization entails value transformations across various systems at both global and national levels, facilitating the metamorphosis of enterprises, diverse sectors of production, and society at large. In light of the digital revolution, new business models emerge, while old systems of production, consumption, and transportation are dismantled and reconstructed.
At the societal level, the paradigm of labor and communication undergoes active transformation, along with how we position ourselves, extract information, and interact; at the governmental level, the state and its institutions are restructured, along with the entire systems of education, healthcare, and transportation. Our modes of utilizing technologies influence our behavior, production and consumption systems, thereby fostering the formation of structured, holistic thinking.
In the digital society, systemic and profound changes occur that impact every aspect of human existence and serve as the driving forces behind emerging megatrends in society, business, economics, and individual dimensions of being, prompted by deep transformation—points of radical technological change and their societal repercussions. The Fourth Industrial Revolution shapes the values of the digital society, digital persona, digital consciousness, and worldview, all determined by the advancement of ICT and possessing the potential to enhance economic growth and productivity.
The potential positive impact of ICT on the expansion of the digital economy stems from the production of knowledge and innovation, as well as the establishment of a high-tech sector as a prototype of an innovative society. The proliferation of technological unemployment outpaces our ability to find new applications to address the issues posed by this digital worldview, given that the revolution of new technologies induces deeper social upheavals than previous industrial revolutions. New information and communication technologies have altered and continue to change the nature of work across all production sectors and professions, necessitating an immediate response to these profound technological shifts.
The influence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on business is perceived as an inevitable phase from the mere transition to digital technologies (characteristic of the third industrial revolution) to a significantly more complex form of innovative change based on the combination of numerous technologies in novel ways. These new digital technologies have forged revolutionary methods for connecting products and services, blurring the traditional boundaries between industries.
The interaction among the physical, digital, and biological realms is a central theme of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, presenting contemporary society with new opportunities for productivity and innovation, as “information technologies and social networks bear ’revolutionary changes’ for the science of the future.” New technologies and the infrastructure of global interaction are reshaping traditional approaches to work and remuneration, leading to the emergence of new types of jobs characterized by flexibility and temporality (the so-called “smart society on demand”). Digital development knows no bounds, thus inevitably raising questions regarding the impact of technologies on geography and vice versa.
In the digital society, automation influences the markets of developing countries, which must seize the opportunities presented by the technical revolution. Analyses indicate that no country will thrive without prioritizing the development of technologies, innovativeness, and technological breakthroughs, thereby necessitating continuous reinforcement of innovative digital systems. As technological and digital advancement knows no boundaries, it influences geography rather than the other way around. Within 10 to 20 years, the infrastructure of “smart cities” will be governed by digital technologies—artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, augmented reality, genetically modified food, new and active energy sources, smart materials, and an inexhaustible array of gadgets and devices interconnected through various means of information exchange.
Moreover, most digital technologies are interrelated, fostering the emergence of new innovative discoveries. Virtual reality (VR) employs computers to create simulated environments of real and imagined worlds, which we can augment with physical presence and new dimensions of digital culture and values. However, regardless of how complex these virtual spaces are today, in the near future, both hardware and software will continually advance, with platforms such as High Fidelity facilitating a virtual world of future generations—potentially as vast and intricate as the tangible world of today. The boundary between human and machine, as well as between online and offline realms, is becoming increasingly blurred.
Augmented reality (AR) provides a direct view of the physical environment through a computer or mobile device screen in real-time, overlaying augmented digital information, other images, and GPS data. By advancing digital values, manufacturers of luxury automobiles, such as Mercedes-Benz or Range Rover, project data about vehicle speed or directions directly onto the windshield. In contrast to virtual reality, which can fabricate an entirely imagined world, augmented reality enhances the perception of reality by overlaying useful data on the surfaces of the images of the things we see around us.
Digital values will expand: augmented reality (AR) can be utilized on any device equipped with sensors and cameras—be it a mobile phone, tablet, glasses, or even contact lenses. It is anticipated that shortly, our gadgets will be immersed in and restored by 2.5 billion applications for augmented reality. The advantages of utilizing digital values are indeed impressive, and the most powerful companies are already demonstrating their practical application in reality.
The formation of digital values within the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is intricately linked to robotics, which is increasingly being equipped with additional features such as high-quality cameras, touch sensors, and laser distance-measuring devices, all controlled by computers. The immense transformations in robotics can be significantly attributed to the "smartphone revolution," as robotics heavily relies on computer chips, batteries, and sensors similar to those found in powerful mobile phones. This indicates that individuals must continually engage in the cultivation of their digital culture and values to survive in the complex digital realm to which they must constantly adapt.
Thus, we may conclude that we live in an era of convergence in the modern world, where the bits of the digital realm merge with the atoms of the physical world. Information technologies and digital changes manifest a distinct trend towards interdependence, wherein the digital, physical, and real worlds interact and influence one another.
Digital technologies have emerged as a driving force and a primary factor in the development of both the economic foundation and society as a whole, becoming an integral part of the creative and innovative design of digital culture and the formation of corresponding digital values. The values held by entrepreneurs and organizational leaders exert a profound influence on employees and the development of digital technologies. Organizational leadership must transform the company culture and prioritize the cultivation of digital values to remain competitive and adaptable to all changes and innovations.
Startups are particularly effective in shaping digital values, as leaders and employees share common digital principles. Humanity is constructing a civilization that is both interdependent and technologically secure. Today, humanity exists as an interconnected global information network that is becoming increasingly vulnerable, as it represents the flip side of technological innovations. All of this suggests that we must endure "the test of progress to avoid reaching the 'point of no return,'" as noted by Mark Goodman in his work "Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It."