Сущность процесса социокультурной адаптации и идентификации человека в информационном пространстве

 

Борисенко Анна Владимировна,

аспирантка кафедры прикладной философии и теологии института философии и психологии Восточноукраинского национального университета им. Владимира Даля, г. Луганск, Украина.

 

Essence of the process of socio-cultural adaptation and man’s identification in the information environment

 

Borisenko Anna Vladimirovna,

the post-graduate of the chair “Applied philosophy and theology”, of the institute “Philosophy and Psychology” of Vladimir Dahl East-Ukrainian National University, Ukraine, city of Lugansk.

 

Рассматривается проблема социокультурной адаптации человека в информационном пространстве в период развития социально – коммуникативных отношений, способствующих изменению социальной структуры общества и сферы культуры.

Ключевые слова: адаптация, информация, информационное пространство, самореализация, социокультурные факторы.

 

The problem of man’s socio-cultural adaptation in information environment during the period of socio-communicative relations promoting to change the society’s social structure and cultural spheres is considered.

Keywords: adaptation, information, information environment, self-realization, socio-cultural factors.

 

Setting a problem

 

Setting new types of information processes which take place in a society cause indigenous changes in the structure and the contents of modern culture; they transform a man including his essence, his civilized existence. The structural culture of information epoch is becoming more complex. On the one hand, it includes the elements of previous culture, but on the other hand, it gives birth to new forms. Changes in the sphere of information technologies development transform not only information environment but all spheres of culture, penetrate in man’s consciousness and change his life activity. Regarding to it the appearing, becoming and developing of a new man under new information conditions is a relevant question of possibilities for modern philosophical discussions. A lot of deep man’s qualities are also transformed under the influence of information environment on the modern man’s existence, with the development of digital technologies and communication changes connected with them. If there are no such transformations a man can’t be adequate to new conditions of his existence in information environment.

So, the development of social networks which are the embodiment of virtual way of man’s existence in digital technologies form the feeling of irresponsibility and psychological discomfort in a man and it causes the requirement for a man to live virtually, but at the same time it makes feelings and emotions not claiming. This lack of coordination is characterized for all modern society. That’s why, the problem dealing with studying of those deep changes which take place in a man due to his existence in information environment of social networks is becoming very relevant nowadays.

It is necessary to mention that such a situation creates new conditions for creative self-realization of a personality, but at the same time definite requirements for its formation and development are appearing. Due to such a development of the situation the researches of the whole complex of changes characterizing the process of man’s socio-cultural adaptation in information environment and the analysis of main factors influencing the appearing of a new type of a personality, so called a civilized man are aslso becoming very relevant.

The researches of the process of personality’s socio-cultural adaptation in the conditions of social changes cause a great interest to this problem. It is necessary to mention that the development of this problematic field hasn’t been done very fully and completely and hasn’t posses a complex nature, although this process is considered and studied from different points of view [1; 2; 4; 6].

Philosophical-anthropological essence of a man in information society, cultural transformation and trans-aggression in information society, the essence of information culture, the phenomenon of an information man who is formed as a new way of modern man’s existence all these aspects are necessary to be considered both with the help of multi-levelness, contradictions of methodological positions and scientific understanding of a man and his socio-cultural existence in the environment of information civilization.

 

 The analysis of the latest researches and publications

 

Taking into consideration the inter-disciplinary nature of the problem of man’s socio-cultural adaptation it is necessary to single out the groups of scientists, whose scientific works deal with such a problem. The researches of general-theoretical aspects of personality’s development, the discovering of theoretical-methodological aspects should be referred to the first group. These works of such foreign researchers as: P. Berger, M. Weber, F. Giddings, R. Merton, J. Mede, T. Parsons, G. Tard, Z. Freud, E. Fromm, and others. There are also scientists of post-soviet environment: B. Ananieva, L. Bueva, V. Vorobyov, Z. Galeev, S. Ivanenkov and others.

The scientists whose a great number of works deal with the researches of information society belong to the second group. They are: D. Bell, V. Inozemtsev, M. Castels, I. Masuda, I. Melyuhin, A. Rakitov, O. Toffler, A. Turin who have analyzed the tendencies and contradictions of information society formation; they have made an attempt to discover the consequences of society information and computerization, and the interconnection in the system “personality- information environment”.

Modern Ukrainian scientists belong to the third group: F.M. Vlasenko (peculiarities of individual’s socialization in the conditions of information society), K.B. Ilyanovich (anthropological crisis in the conditions of modern technological civilization), T. V. Lugutsenko (the influence of the processes of socio-cultural existence on the consciousness of a modern man; essence and contents of cultural environment in information society in the context of post-modern culture; transformation of man’s values as a factor of information civilization formation); S. Martynyuk ( the process of appearance of information civilization as a new type of interaction between a man and a society), V.M. Semikolenov (specific influence of information and information technologies on the moral), V.M. Skalatskiy (information environment: modern theories and models).

It is also necessary to note that a lot of theoretical questions dealing with the mechanisms “involving” a personality into socio-cultural processes are not completely and thoroughly studied. It refers to the researches of the process of socio-cultural adaptation in the conditions of information environment appearance and development, to the increasing the role of information- communicative technologies which change the man’s life activity. They are not researched completely enough. That’s why the researches of these aspects are particularly relevant while forming a new type of socio-cultural relations in modern society.

 

The aim of the research is to determine socio-cultural factors causing the problems connected with an insufficient degree of man’s adaptation in cultural environment of information society. To achieve the aim it is necessary to solve such following research tasks as: to analyze the structure of key research notions and their correlation between themselves; to reveal typical preconditions and situations causing insufficient socio-cultural man’s adaptation.

 

Main part

 

It is necessary to mention that socio-acceptable ways to meet the people’s requirements mean to analyze the existing problems of socio-cultural adaptation and cultural competence from gnosis-logical, axis-logical and philosophical positions more deeply and profoundly. The theory of culture allows us to understand not only what we have in reality but also what must be or could be in ideal, what we must strive for.

The increase of the level of people’s adaptation and cultural competence will promote their self-realization greatly, people will be satisfied with their lives, with themselves, they will be more tolerant to others, they will be able to adapt to new conditions easily, and their self-respect will be increased. It means that it is necessary to find out new approaches to existing problems of the first and subsequent socialization, bringing up and self- study.

We understand socio-cultural adaptation as a process and a result of adaptation of some individuals to changing socio-cultural conditions by means of alteration of the forms of socio-cultural organization and regulation, mechanisms to transform socio-cultural experience, thinking paradigms within the frameworks of values system of given culture. Thus the boundaries of adapted behavior are given by limits within which given culture exists.

Socio-cultural adaptation includes social and cultural adaptations (the process and the result to adapt to normative culture). The mechanism of socio-cultural adaptation at the level of personality is a subsequent mutual influence of the following processes such as: the reflection of standard of living and life activity in man’s consciousness, the evaluation of these conditions alterations; correlation of estimation with expectations and man’s life plans; internal and behavior affects arising due to the interconnection of objective tendencies of life activity conditions with subjective estimations and expectations ( for example, suffering from discomfort, till a shock, understanding a great lack between our expectations and what we have in social reality); appearance of defense,protect reaction (in which we can also include the phase of apathy accompanying with reaction automation and memory deterioration); making a decision. Solution (making a decision) is the point of division (split) from which there are two possible ways out: don’t take the requirements of socio-cultural environment till aggressive forms of behavior or transform yourself, internally prepare yourself for the realization of hidden potentials which allow you to be fully involved in social life [5, p.188].

Such constant elements of every day life as life environment, intensity of the development - fast fulfillment of different tasks, and communicative environment have been changed greatly nowadays. Information technologies pack down life environment of a modern man, normalize environmental movements, reduce the dependence between the location in the environment and performing of the main functions in every day life, allow a man to be simultaneously in two places: in a busy human physical place and in communication information environment. The development of information technologies leads to the appearance of such peculiarities of temporality which are characterized for man’s every day life in information society as unlineness, pseudo-cycling, time personalization, and de-synchronization. Thus, uninterrupted transformation of man’s every day life, typing and legitimating of those what recently haven’t belonged to the sphere of every day life yet became the consequences of information technologies development.

Man’s requirement for adaptation and self-realization is one of the most significant thing at all times. For every person the lack or limited possibilities for adaptation and self-realization cause the feeling of inferiority and sometimes even the feeling of useless existence.

The age of information technologies when information and communication take the first place in our life sets high demands to man’s internal potential, first of all to his intellect, creative abilities, wishes and skills to realize his/her possibilities, to realize in every way. It should be pointed out that a modern man is not socially stable; he is always in the state of constant trans-aggression, transformation and incompleteness; it is connected with a modern crisis of identity.

N.V. Reinhardt considers the problem of man’s identity under the conditions of information-communication environment in his work “Transformation of man’s identity in information-computer world”. It is first of all caused due to modern socio-cultural characteristic features of society, the society of high technological culture. The process of information has become one of the reasons of qualitatively new level of this development.

The consequences of this process are the following: the appearance of new forms of life, the alteration of the world picture, transformation of a man’s identity under the influence of new information technologies. To our mind the mechanism which is spoken here about, is the necessity of constant renovation and appearance of new and new, more efficient technologies: from technologies in the field of production to the technologies in the sphere of management and politics.

The problem to retain a man’s identity under modern conditions is becoming more and more relevant because the identity determines the spiritual beginning of a man, forms his unity and viability. Previous natural environment “man – world – relations” is substituted by artificial one “man – computer – interactivity”. Virtual environment allows the person who is in the “network world” to overcome the frames, boundaries of traditional communications.

Simultaneously new types of man’s behavior, alternative those which historically have been developed in real society are created and built. The man from passive observer is becoming the “navigator” (N.V. Reinhardt), the searcher of new communicators in nets; he is becoming a creative personality who is always ready for a dialogue. Since the intensive development of science and engineering doesn’t fully guarantee the development of spiritual world of a man, doesn’t keep his ethical ideals, so as a consequence it can cause the threat to loose the individuality.

Information-communication environment formed with the help of technical means influences directly the identification of man’s characteristic features which are necessary to be considered as some kind of ‘quasi-social” (V.D. Isaev); it is a special type of socio-cultural environment. The meaning of computer simulation, the form of its developing in virtual environment and the mechanism of their interconnection to the man’s identity are determined not only from the point of view of its ontological and gnosis -logical foundations but also as an anthropological element.

It is necessary to note that man’s ability to be changed and be adapted to the conditions of his existence which are constantly renewed is connected not only with the time demand but in this the frankness and incompleteness of human nature are developing due to which the environment for creative work and freedom is created. K.M. Shelupahina’s statement is very important regarding to that “…existence in the conditions of information-computer civilization, “virtualization” of cultural life doesn’t cancel but increases the man’s requirement in creative self-realization while widening the forms and styles of communication, and thus enriching cultural contacts. Inexhaustible language resources of virtual environment provide the possibility of having uninterrupted creative search with the help of means of individual word building” [8,292]. Thus, not taking into account contradictory personality’s relations with virtual world, modern virtual practices promote to realize human wishes concerning communication and self-realization in creative work.

Self-realization is the process which finds out the fundamental anthropological constants: self-identity, self-transcendence, unity, frankness, freedom, creative activity, body and some others. Dialectics of self-transcendence and self-identity which foresee in them the combination of self-rising, originality and those “variables”, the nature of which is conditioned by “involving” the man into different relations is one of the most important things in the process of realization. There is a new environment for self-realization in modern society, it is virtual reality which gives a man unique possibilities for self-realization, discovering his creative potential. Maximum comfortable conditions for self-realization, his/her personal beginning are created in virtual environment for a person. These are: additional possibilities for communication, anonymity, visual non-presentation, reducing different kind of limitations, and also the possibility “to make experiments” with your own identity, “to try on” different roles. The question is how much virtual reality promotes the personality’s self-realization, what new kind of possibilities are created for it, if virtual reality becomes relevant as in practical sense (in the life of every man), so as in theoretical understanding, for example, in the context of philosophical anthropology.

Coming from M.K. Mamardashvili’s utterance “…a man is always at the stage of the development and any history must be determined as the history of his efforts to become a man. A man doesn’t exist, -he is constantly developing in the process of his development” [4, 13].

It is also necessary to note very great importance of three components for self-realization: individual’s efforts from the realization of his/her potential; creative attitude to reality; social environment, social structures in which a man improves and changes himself realizing his potential. Thus, these three components can be joined up into two aspects of self-realization: self-realization links with real creative work; the cause of self-realization to interact with other people; it is a communicative aspect of this problem which is not sufficiently understood at this moment. Thus, self-realization requires special sense in the communication process. The dialogue between him and by himself is not enough for the personality; realization in “his own eyes” is not enough. Self-realization forms two inter-caused poles: “sensible receiving” i.e. the increasing of personality’s sensible potential thanks to active “absorbing” other people’s senses, and “sensible succession” (“senses enriching” through the striving for sharing their experience, developing themselves in others). Thus, communicative and creative aspects of self-realization problem are intertwined between themselves.

Two above-mentioned aspects require additional nuance due to a new socio-cultural environment of the present; thanks to virtual reality new possibilities of personality’s self-realization are opened. Virtual environment is considered to be a separate sphere of self-realization which is connected with communication. For example, I.G. Soshenko links man’s self-realization in virtual environment with providing new additional possibilities to open man’s internal potential fully and more completely: a man can participate in web-discussions, freely express his/her opinion at meetings, forums and in chats, he can make his personal web-sites and so on [6]. A.Yu. Fimin supposes virtual environment as a unique possibility of a personality’s self-realization to communicate with people who are closed to him by spirit, he calls him “…world-wide club of friends having the same interests, correspondence, partners and confederates’ search, by profession, hobby or leisure.” [7.64].

Analyzing the results of the consideration of the problem practical aspect taking into account the specific features of up-to date epoch we can come to the conclusion that in this case anthropological constants are presented as existentialism and are interpreted with the consideration of particular life conditions for a modern man. It is also necessary to mention that self-transcendence is implemented due to information and is understood not only as knowledge widening but as communication, in the sense of intellectual product circulation; thus, self-identity clashes with constant readiness of a modern man to “change the form”. Developing of fundamental anthropological constants under the conditions of information has significant nature of consuming which is a characteristic feature of modern society, it also allows us to find out changes in self-realization of a modern man in information environment because not only the society is changing but a man is changing himself. However, the main change is that a modern man can exist in different realities.

Thus, new socio-cultural conditions influence the formation of a modern man: a person has a possibility to be interactive, he participates in the process of co-creativeness; communicative activity is increasing which is often expressed in information communication domination over, instead of its profoundness, deepness. A key, dominated role of communication in modern society leads to extra-version forced nature of all internal one and injections of all external ones forces a man to act against his wishes, to be maximum opened and accessible.

A modern man develops himself as a passive consumer of information and human relations; he is inclined to “narcissism”, he is notable for the interest only to him and he is absolutely indifferent to his surrounding environment, he is “a market person” who is aimed only at barter, particularly at information which can change his “Me”; he has permanent aim to sale himself with great benefit; he is a man who is ready to constant infinite transformations. Other words, a modern man is ready to be changed depending on the circumstances. However, at the same time creativity is one of the main characteristic features of such a man, he aspires to realize his possibilities with the aim to express his original “Me”. The abundance of information makes, forces a man be more flexible, make constantly a choice between significant and auxiliary things. Possessing a great amount of information, joining a great number of communications a man receives much more possibilities to find out him by a much unexpected way, because his field of activity is widening and it means that a number of various possibilities for his realization is increasing too.

Thus, information socio-cultural environment of modern society makes a modern man able to exist in different realities and it gives additional possibilities for self-realization in virtual environment.

 

References

 

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4.                  Мамардашвили М. К. Европейская ответственность / М. К. Мамардашвили – М.:Мысль,1991. – С.13.

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6.                  Сощенко И.Г. Образ человека в социокультурном пространстве информационного общества / И.Г. Сощенко – Ставрополь, 2007. –157с.

7.                  Чечет Б.Ф. Сущность, условия и тенденции самореализации личности / Б.Ф. Чечет. – Иркутск, 2002. – С.64.

8.                  Шелупахіна К.М. філософсько-антропологічні проблеми віртуального простору: форми та стилі інтерактивної взаємодії як чинника творення „нової” ідентичності /К.М. Шелупахіна // Регілія, релігійність, філософія та гуманітаристика у сучасному інформаційному просторі:національний та інтернаціональний аспекти:зб.наук.праць (за матеріалами V Міжнародної науково-практичної конференції від 25-27 грудня 2012р.) \ за загл. ред. Журба М.А. – Луганськ: вид-во СНУ ім. В,Даля,2012. – С.292.

 

Поступила в редакцию 16.06.2014 г.