Homo digitalis and self-awareness: transformation, challenges and request a personological unique self

Philosophy «Problematization of the human: an ongoing project» (special issue)

Abstract

The article aims to comprehend the situation and the humanitarian consequences of the ongoing radical transformation of the entire way of life caused by digitalization. The focus is on the challenge facing human subjectivity. The results of modern neurophysiological research show that self-awareness (as the highest level and essence of subjectivity) is formed as a result of socialization which is accompanied by communication in a narratological format. This makes it possible to clarify the content of such concepts as consciousness, self-awareness, freedom, as well as to identify the role of responsibility in the formation of the corresponding phenomena. Analysis shows that mastering the first-person narration of experience plays a key role in shaping responsibility/freedom. The narrative approach turns out to be important both in the analysis of the phenomenology of consciousness and in the analysis of the historical evolution of mankind. It is this circumstance that is crucial in understanding the prospects for homo digitalis. The modern «mega-machine» civilization synthesizes the living and non-living, the biological and mechanical into a single digital ecosystem. This ecosystem displaces not only the natural world but also its perception, the very experience of going through some experience «in the first person». The volumes of information and the speed of its transmission and processing leave no room for reflection. A person is required to provide not comprehension and reasoning but a «correct» reaction, the activation of options that launch the given algorithms. It is actually about a transition to signal communication and «new animality». Homo digitalis becomes not an independent part of this system but its option: a tool and a product. The article provides generalization of the horizon of such prospects: both the loss of subjectivity in digital codes and its being in demand. The analysis performed allows us to outline the content of humanitarian expertise not only of the consequences of digital technologies but also of their development and implementation.