THE INTERNET AND SPIRITUAL WORLD OF MAN: VALUES AND IDEOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract

Introduction. The problem of understanding conscience in the conditions of the influence on it by modern information technologies has become of great importance. In this case the purpose of this work is a research of changes taking place in the intellectual world of active users of the Internet in the context of their predicament of value-based structure of a personality. Materials and methods. In this work there are the main methods used in social-humanitarian sciences first of all analytical and system approaches, a secondary analysis of the data of empiric researches. The research of the problem (case study) takes place also on the basis of using a new methodological approach – a worldview analysis of the phenomena of intellectual( spiritual) world of a person having made by the author. Results. The article concludes that the impact of the Internet on people’s spiritual world is determined by its essential characteristics - a huge number of hypertext information which is readily available and can be quickly found by a person. The possibility to generate and spread the information by an anonym on the Web affects the Network users’ spiritual world. A large amount of information that can be quickly spread and the phenomenon of hipertextuality, – all this stimulates the trend towards a mosaic thinking, an important feature of which is multitasking. Hypertextuality and multitasking, in its turn, contribute to the process of reducing Network users’ voluntary attention, up to attention deficit disorder. Orientation toward the information that is continuously available to a Network user changes the nature of its memorizing. It is increasingly happening due to the external expansion of consciousness. In addition, there is activation of the process of visualizing consciousness that may reduce the role of abstract logical thinking. The Internet gives the opportunity to meet a variety of needs. Discussion and Conclusions. However, the impact of the Internet on the people’s spiritual world is complex. The degree of negative or positive effects can be determined in relation to a particular person taking into consideration the characteristics of his spiritual world, above all, his values and outlook. Sustainable outlook which includes positive values for an individual and society helps to avoid the negative influence of informational technologies and make use of their opportunities for personal development. An individual with more developed values and world outlook can better point out important and necessary information in the information flow. He can better generalize it to his advantage, correlate it with the existing knowledge and successfully apply it in practice.