| Summary: | The Internet is not a technology of limited functionality, but rather a global systemic phenomenon with a tendency to self-development and producing a broad range of socio-cultural effects. On the one hand, Internet development and penetration lead to significant socio-cultural transformations. On the other hand, it is the societal development tendencies of the past decades that have stimulated the Internet and ICT penetration in all spheres of life. Discourses related to the concepts and policies of building information society and knowledge societies should embrace the understanding of ICTs as an essential but not sufficient component of converging nano-, bio-, information and cognitive (NBIC) sciences and technologies, being of paramount importance for modern technological development and able to impact global socio-cultural processes. The Internet defines the process and forms of culture mediatization. The Internet and new media have become a major space for group and interpersonal communications, generating new cultural meanings and ways of interaction. In particular, the following socio-cultural impacts should be noticed: - The Internet creates a basic environment for the socialization of new generations, changing their values and ways of thinking. - A culture gap between generations is thus getting deeper. Traditional mechanisms of cultural reproduction are broken down. Lagging behind in mastering new technologies, older generation is losing its status as a carrier of valuable cultural experience. - A phenomenon of new escapism is coming into being which implies diving into the virtual space to avoid solving real world problems. - Logocentric, narrative way of thinking is losing its dominance, getting supplemented and partly replaced by “clip” mentality characterized by a lower degree of logical connectivity, criticality, consistency. - Consciousness immersed in cyberspace largely loses the ability for supra-situational activities and long-term planning. As a result traditional models of intellect-enabled ...
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