Precedent 256

Abstract

The article was brought to life by a new event in the scientific world called by the authors “precedent 256”. This attracted the attention of the scientific community with its originality. The study of the nature and laws of occurrence of this phenomenon in modern culture are in the focus of this article. The authors believe that the analyzed precedent does not stand apart from the modern cultural space but is connected by causal relations with the main tendencies of contemporary culture. Moreover, it is a bright representative expression of what is happening in the mental shifts which are taking plce in the modern world. Service, product, competition, advertising, total regimentation of steps-actions-movements, maximum control, ritualized regulations, the headship of the office to the actual production — all of this, with the transition into a farce, put it in the analyzed precedent. Folding into calculative system of thinking becomes a new form of rationality: the letter becomes an idol, scientometrics, ritual computing achievements, summarizing, creating tables and filling in report forms are a sacred mechanism of the formation of the subject. The authors assert that, therefore, we are witnessing the birth of a new, virtual-ritualistic reality with unique spacial and temporal parameters. Along with that, a new type of sociality is forming based on impersonal algorithms of actions, typical circuits of behavior. It is a kind of “anthropological intervention0Ф in which the only space where the subject can posit and rehabilitate himself is the element of symbols, letters, figures, calculations, and record keeping in the broad sense of the word. Refs 7.