Anthropogenesis and Dynamics of Values Under Conditions of Information Technology Development

Introduction

The entry into the information age provided radically new conditions of the modern anthropogenesis–the formation and the development of human beings, their corporality, consciousness, life world, relations with their social world and other persons. If the relations between a subject and the world are presented in the form of a model, it becomes obvious that human beings exist in two forms–real and virtual. The real world is the objective, physical one. The virtual world is the imaginary, simulated one that in the modern society, relies heavily on information technologies, due to which it has acquired visibility and form. In the modern society the space of virtual sphere is extending and becoming dominant, forming a new kind of culture–an electronic (digital) one. The processes of interpersonal communication, education, creative work, leisure are moving from the sphere of real life into the virtual one. The virtual reality is becoming not merely a mediator between human beings and the world but truly the world itself. Virtual things are identified with real things in the younger generation consciousness, changing human beings too. In the age preceding the information technologies the virtual sphere supplemented, amended reality, but in the modern society the generation “living in the Net” treats the physical reality as a necessary adding to the digital one.

The analysis of these issues cannot be deferred to the fields of technology studies or information studies. This is the sphere of philosophical analysis, determining the human interrelations with different reality forms. New branches of philosophy have already arisen in the modern science under conditions of the development of information technologies. Thus, Gabbay, Thagard, and Woods (2008) propose distinguishing a specific area of philosophic analysis–“philosophy of information,” studying this most important ontological and cognitive conception. This scientific area can become the extension of forming research line of philosophic issues in the application of computer technologies by a human (Turner & Eden, 2008). Keeping this line one can presume the coming together of anthropology, ethics and axiology of the information society in order to study specific features of human development, human values and moral imperatives in terms of the modern age of informatization.

The objective of this research paper is to discuss the specification of changes of human essence and values under the conditions of the development of information technologies. To achieve this purpose I will study the influence of the Information Age on life values, liberties, knowledge, communication, love as well as the changes of understanding the reality, provoked by the formation of electronic culture, “the third nature.” First we will touch on the understanding of a value as a form of meaningfully-significant objectives of a person.

• Research methods. The methods of my research are guided by the existential approach to understanding of values, application of axiological analysis of key anthropologic phenomena and processes in the society, papers of such theorists of the “information society” as Bell, Castells, etc. I used the method of the transferring of Indian philosophy cultural matrices to modern process and phenomena.

• Research findings. The findings of this research can be used in the work with the youth, in carrying out of psychological trainings for the users of social networks, having problems of real communication, and Internet-dependent teenagers, as well as in conducting the courses in culture and ethics of the information age.

Values As An Existential Choice

I will assume the understanding of a value according to existential approach, allowing to take into account both the factor of the freedom of individual choice and the diversity of the world of values itself.