The new role of the technological component in the social reality of the digital transition era

Abstract

The article explicates a new factor that is relevant for researchers of social processes occurring at a current time. For the first time in the history of mankind, activity at any given moment must be correlated with unpredictable revolutionary development of the technological environment, the result of which, during one human life, repeatedly transforms the socioeconomic environment. In the past history of mankind, when studying social dynamics at any particular moment in time, the factor of the development of the technological environment could be neglected, despite the fact that the state of the technological environment always predetermined the state of the social environment. This action was possible because, within the limits of human life, the technological environment could be perceived as static (constant scenery for the action of the social). Modernity, characterized by a specific pace of development of the digital environment, brings fundamental transformations to this picture. The radical acceleration of the pace of technological development, combined with the focus of this development on the field of information technology, determines the unprecedented originality of the digital era that has come. It is shown that under conditions of the critical speed of transformation processes, the horizons of scientific foresight are sharply narrowed. The author defines the fundamental need for a concept of “techno”. Thus, contemporary social theories require an inextricable connection between the concepts of “socio-technological”.