Culture in the Digital Civilization: A New Stage in Understanding the Future Strategy for Sustainable Development

The current situation is determined by a plurality of uncertainties of social, economic, environmental and technological nature, which cause instability of development and form a new stage of social development conventionally called digital civi­lization. The ambiguity of interpretation of this term is also reflected in its derivatives, and this fully applies to the concept of digital economy.

Development of the digital infrastructure, transition to the network principles of communication, and personalization of the Internet, are the factors that change the ethical principles and foundations of social and cultural interaction. The issue of individual and collective cultural practices and behavior models based on the new hierarchy of values is of particular relevance in social and humanitarian knowledge. In the information society, the dramatization of trust and the vulnerability of freedom testify to the society’s transition to a new quality — “normal anomie”.

Basing on the analysis of scientific projects, documents, some forecasts and development scenarios of the digital economy and its social consequences, this study aims to trace the reflection of the relationship between the digital economy and culture, and to identify the ways that reflect the inclusion of culture in digital economy development programs. In this case, culture can be considered in the context of these programs as an element of infrastructure, and an institutional contour, representing a part of human and technological capital.

The authors’ ideas are concentrated around the search for the grounds of the transformational changes taking place in scientific research, educational and cultural practices that have potential to form a sustainable cultural context of the digital civilization, which will be supported in order to prevent the pressure of the processes generated by technology that lead to “dehumanization” of development.

The applied part of the study reveals one aspect of “digital culture” — its ability to saturate network multimedia spaces with meanings and values. This increases the requirements for the quality of information on open national cultural resources — websites of libraries, cultural and recreational centers, museums, departmental portals.

The article pays special attention to the analysis of consistency of the tasks on scientific-technical and technological “breakthrough” with the humanistic values of development at the initial stage of implementation of the project of “digital economy of Russia”. These transformations require community to formulate a clear and intelligible position on the humanistic imperative of developing the digital economy and digital civilization in Russia and the world. At this stage, it is still possible to identify what kind of adjustment this project needs, partial or thorough, in order to avoid ending up in a situation of value-semantic chaos, losing the main thing — socio-cultural human component of the next stage of epochal changes. There is a need for a public examination of the Digital Economy Development Program in Russia, and more coordinated, targeted civil society activities to preserve cultural and human capital.

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