Digital civilization is a change that imposes itself culturally and socially

From the beginning, God distinguished man from other creatures with certain characteristics that enabled him to progress and develop. The most prominent of these features is the ability to communicate and form social and cultural relationships, which contributed greatly to the formation of the first human civilizations thousands of years ago. Since then, man has witnessed the emergence and decline of many civilizations, until we have reached the present day. However, the spatial barrier had previously prevented the formation of a single, unifying human civilization in all parts of the globe.

As is known, civilization is a social system that helps humans increase their cultural production. There are four basic elements for its formation: economic resources, political systems, moral traditions, and the pursuit of sciences and arts. Since #technological_development has deeply affected industrial development, the economic structure, the international scene, and social life, especially with the comprehensive spread and integration between fields, and since #digital_technology has created and will create new business models, there has been much talk about the formation of a new civilization, which for the first time brings together all human beings, and which is #Digital_civilization.

So, with the growing impact of #technological_development on the lives of individuals and societies in an unprecedented way, the world of the #Internet, means of communication, and electronic space have become an integral part of the human being. To the point that led many thinkers to fear that the concept of man as an independent being would change to an information being connected to the entire world. The revolution of development has facilitated the ability to communicate instantly and through various means between people, and to access countless forms of information  without any complexity. This is in addition to the remarkable progress in the field of #artificial_intelligence, where every human’s experience is now linked  to a huge database, providing targeted information prepared exclusively for every person, which is essential for making a wide range of decisions. Thus, the principles of human behavior and individuals’ views of the world began to change as human circumstances changed, until the central question became: “What does it mean to be a human being in a highly connected world?”

The French sociologist, cognitive scientist, and philosopher, Dan Sperber, tried to answer the impact of digital cultural and social change in his book, “ Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach ,” by proposing a new concept of culture , considering that the culture of society is not a space inhabited by people, but rather a network with broad lines that allows exploring how Human behavior establishes long-lasting and sustainable patterns. As for the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who died in 2020 , the year digital civilization was ignited, he was more skeptical about it. He considered that the current digital culture, fueled by large companies, leads to the deterioration and disruption of social life. He also warned that the current stage involves a loss of knowledge and an underestimation of the importance of people’s intellectual and scientific abilities.

Relying on Stigler’s approach, Janaëlle Longlois, a lecturer in communication studies at York University, explained the close relationship between the self embodied in digital networks and the scientific-technical rationality that governs those networks. She emphasized that in light of the transformation of every human being’s experience, it is important to critically observe how the process of rebuilding the self takes place through the spaces available online. The question that will only be answered by time remains how individuals and societies understand the idea of ​​existence in light of the current changes.

Therefore, #digital_reality requires us to recognize the fundamental transformations of the human experience, distinguish between reality and virtuality, and between man, nature, and machine, and know the result of the shift from the scarcity of #information to its abundance on human life.

It remains to mention that change has always been difficult to accept. No matter how many good things it has achieved throughout history, it has carried even a few bad deeds. Individuals and societies have always faced it with reservations, and groups of people have always sought to fight it. So what if the change taking place with #digital_civilization is on a global level that mankind has never witnessed before? It remains for us to be certain that the wheel of history will continue, and the transition to #digital_civilization has become a reality if we do not say that it has already happened, and every person has the duty of enlightenment and strive to benefit from the positives of the #technological_development taking place in the era of this civilization, which will protect us and our societies to a large extent from Disadvantages of the new, unlimited digital world.