Citizen Abstraction": Self-identification in the information society

Abstract

The problem of self-identification of the person in modern «information society» is considered against Hegel's concept of alienation and modern theories of «open society». The article emphasizes ongoing erosion or annihilation of those characteristics or markers by which the individual traditionally identified himself in the society, and states that the person is being transformed into something similar to "citizen Abstraction" from an anecdote of the times of the French revolution (during the procedure of the identification of the defendant the revolutionary tribunal consistently recognized insolvent and abolished by revolution all the elements of his name, and eventually was compelled to refuse to the defendant the identifying characteristics and to identify him as "citizen Abstraction" and in this quality incompetent to any judicial authority).