The article is devoted to the presentation of the ideas of the information-semiotic theory of culture and the outline of the conceptual and methodological prerequisites and contextual conditions for its emergence. The key idea of the theory is that culture is a form of human existence, an expression of the features and facets of its existence. And the unique feature of a person, his being lies in the ability to create and use various forms and types of information in increasing volumes and at an increasing speed — in the ability for effective information creativity, which should be taken into account and reflected in any theory of culture. It is emphasized that the emergence of the information-semiotic theory of culture is also a consequence of the developing processes of reorientation of social and humanitarian knowledge to the ideas and principles of the information approach, which is especially important for cultural science, which is associated with almost the entire spectrum of human sciences. The ideas of the presented theory expand the ideas not only about the essence, but also about the mechanisms of development and functioning of culture, and on the basis of these ideas, new principles and criteria for the typology of culture, a new interpretation of the category “cultural form” and the resulting (interpretation) typology have been developand proposed. cultural forms, which creates the preconditions for the theoretical and methodological arsenal of cultural studies to reach a qualitatively new level. This theory also provides a combination in the methodology of cultural science of a synergetic approach in the cognition of culture with an informational approach, including by equipping the interdisciplinary plan with analytical categories — frame, hierarchy, instability, nonlinearity, order parameter, reference, emergence. And as the most important feature of the presented theory, the unification and synthesis within its framework of the existing theoretical and methodological concepts and approaches in cultural studies (systemic, activity, synergetic) is noted, since culture in this theory is thought and interpreted not only as a form of human existence based on activity as such, and on information activities and information processes, in particular, which are characterized by complex multi-level systemicity, instability, spontaneity, systemic synergistic patterns, thus bringing the process of learning culture to a post-classical paradigm new level.