Man in the Digital Range of Differences and Repetitions

Works by the Winners of the Philosophical Essay Competition of the RAS Institute of Philosophy "The Impact of Digitalization on the Knowledge of the World and on Human Self-Awareness"

Abstract

The article considers the phenomenon of digitalization in the context of the fashion system and the logic of consumption. Modern achievements of technological progress are controlled by big capital and subject to the laws of advertising, which leads to the expansion of secondary non-functional systems. Existing in the coordinates of consumption, technology makes timid steps to satisfy the characteristic features of modernity: the desires for speed, acceleration, and differentiation. It formalizes the everyday habits of man and makes them dependent on consumption. The private and the public compete, seducing both the individual consumer and entire institutions with technology, promising the optimization of time and resources. In this way, digital reality manages to absorb and transform all areas of society, from the economy and leisure to the urban environment and human relations. Digital reality becomes total in anthropological dimension, which means that the need for analog and manual production becomes an element of the game of difference and repetition necessary for the existence of a fashion system. Perhaps as long as our fantasies of progress remain within the simple needs of comfort and pleasure, cinema will continue to paint us a bleak picture of the future as punishment for wasted human potential. However, a way out can be found in the public use of technology to call for self-reflection.