Information Society, 2018, Issue 1
Keywords and Abstracts
Go to the Future or Stay in the Past?
VERSHINSKAYA Olga Nikolaevna
The article discusses increasing influence of ICTs on social behavior and style of life. Leading world researchers say that our world is in jeopardy, that people must change their mode of thinking. Human life is being transformed and people must be ready for it. Civilization of idleness is being formed, ‘superfluous’ people will emerge. Problem of robotization in Russia is analyzed. Surveys show that a new digital techno style is being formed. Basic indicators of its formation are explored.
Two view points on our future are discussed – alarmist and moderate ones. People become unclaimed if they are not ready to change. The role of important random happenings, Black Swans is described. Evolution based on natural selection is gradually transformed by evolution based on reasonable intent, human intent.
Keywords:information-communication technologies, civilization of idleness, extra people, Black Swans, digital techno style, digital nightmares.
Knowledge Economy and the Information Society: Ten Years Later
DAGAEV Alexander Alexandrovich
The article compares changes in investment flows to the knowledge economy of Russia and a number of leading industrial countries in the period of 2002-2015 using the model proposed by OECD experts. The knowledge economy in a broad sense includes R&D sector, training of specialists with higher education and ICT sector. There are different approaches to the development of the knowledge economy used by different countries. In modern conditions, it is necessary to take into account not so much the volume of investments in this sector, but the originality and quality of conducted scientific researches, the level of training of specialists and the innovative orientation of information and computer technologies.
Keywords:knowledge economy, R&D sphere, investments to the knowledge economy, information and communication technology.
On the Anthropological Future of the NBICS Society
BASALAEVA Oksana Gennadyevna
Advanced technologies of the information society have given impetus to the creation of new social reality that is different by its features from previous historical types and affects practically all aspects of a modern people’s life, changing, among other things, the way of its being. The changes are related to transhumanism and cognitive science, which constitute the distinctive feature of the civilization in the 21st century.
Keywords: transhumanism, convergence, cognition, information society, NBICS society, man, post human.
Pax Urbanica: Cities in Global Networked Civilization
VERSHININA Inna Alfredovna, DOBRINSKAYA Darya Egorovna
The article examines global consequences of the information and communication revolution. One of such consequences is formation of a new social order, key components of which are connectivity and functional geography (connectography). State borders are becoming more permeable for the main flows of the modern economy resources. According to Parag Khanna, this fact leads to the development of a functional infrastructure becoming a reflection of the real-world structure. Connectivity, as a new paradigm of a global organization, replaces the division that is typical for the previous political map of the world. Khanna says that connectography is replacing geography, and cities, including global ones, play a key role on the new world map. The article also analyzes the transformation of global cities, which is described by Saskia Sassen. Specific attention is paid to the need for sustainable urbanization, involving the creation of smart cities and communities, which becomes the base of the infrastructure matrix of a global networked civilization.
Keywords: connectography, global connectivity, planetary urbanization, global cities, smart cities, Parag Khanna, Saskia Sassen.
Informational/Global in Understanding of Modern Society by Manuel Castells
NAUMENKO Tamara Vasilyevna
The relevance of the topic considered in this article is predetermined by the acuteness and importance of everything that currently exists in the society and is related to both information processes and the information society. The article presents a critical analysis of the information society concept proposed by well-known Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells and also examines some critical arguments by Frank Webster. Controversial position of Castells with regard to information and technological determinism, his understanding of the information society, which comes from the separation of concepts informational/global economy and industrial economy, as well as attributes of a new type of society are considered. Specificities of post-Marxist basis of Castells’s theory and his controversial position on technological determinism are analyzed by Webster who highly appreciated that Castells distinguished the main source of productivity as the impact of knowledge on the knowledge itself. At the same time, Webster concluded that the opinion both on the national state and the crisis that accompanies the state and the form of political democracy described by Castells cannot be considered as an evidence of the emergence of a new type of society.
Keywords: information society, technological determinism, informational, global, industrial, relations of production, relations of power, Manuel Castells, Frank Webster.
E-Commerce Market Institutions: Logistics Providing
KALUZHSKY Mikhail Leonidovich
Development of highly competitive logistics infrastructure is one of the possible solutions of e-commerce institutional development. National participants of the virtual market are still lagging behind their foreign competitors in the struggle for consumer’s attention. The article analyzes mechanisms of formation of the logistics infrastructure as one of the most important institutions for the development of the e-commerce market in Russia.
Keywords: network economy, e-commerce, distribution logistics, providing, market institutions, logistics providing, electronic trading platforms.
Elderly Muscovites in the Information World
POPOV Pavel Vasilyevich, USPENSKAYA Tatiana Nikolaevna
Article analyzes results of the study “Elderly Person in the Information Society” conducted in early 2017, supplementing the system of concepts on how deeply elderly people in Moscow are engaged in use of information and digital technologies, methods of meeting needs of elderly people in receiving information, using computers and mobile devices, as well as using the World Wide Web.
Keywords: information, elderly people, information and digital technologies, computer equipment, mobile devices, training in information and digital technologies.
