DIGITAL SOCIETY AS “A SNEER OF HISTORY”

Abstract

The article examines digital society from a historiosophical point of view using such Hegel’s category as universal world irony. It is stated that the implementation of the Modern project based on the principles of rationalism and anthropocentrism has led to the threat of dehumanization of society and desocialization of a human. The digital society is interpreted as the result of a specifi c social practice with relevant actors and goals. The origins of the technocratic development of society are found in the sphere of politics and the constructive-projective attitude towards society and a human, characteristic of the Enlightenment ideology. The example of the education sector illustrates that criticism and denial of traditional institutions and forms of social communication are explained by the impossibility of subjecting them to complete digitalization and, accordingly, to the process of political and bureaucratic control. Hegel’s “irony of history” manifested itself in the fact that science, emancipated from religion and philosophy, within the framework of modern digital reality, obediently turns into “a maidservant” of technology and technocrats.