No. 2(55) 2024: Network Culture. Network Culture. Culture before the Internet, on the Internet and after the Internet
Guest Editor of the issue:
Dokuchaev Ilya Igorevich, Doctor of Science (Philosophy), Professor, Head of the Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge, St. Petersburg State University
Contemporary culture is the result of globalization, i.e. the process of convergence of different regions of the planet around the key forms of spiritual and material culture associated with the achievements of modern science and the technologies of mass production and mass consumption economy based on it. At the same time, the Internet plays a key role among these technologies. While the second half of the twentieth century was marked by the unconditional dominance of mass culture, which dissolved all forms of classical culture of the past, including the elitist protest of the first half of the twentieth century, today mass culture is taking on a completely different form. It is the result of the shift of culture into virtual reality. In this reality, there is no longer a professional author of projects of mass culture artifacts intended for production and consumption, but rather a social network of actors who continuously refine the artifact to some always intermediate outcome. These actors are not only not professionals, but they are not even human beings, for they represent only a fragment of some real personality, its mask or role. On this basis, it can be argued that contemporary culture differs from all historical types of culture known to us so far, including traditional culture, creative culture, and its latest variant, postmodernism. The issue proposes to discuss the key parameters of this new historical type of culture – network culture. Namely: who is the creator of artifacts of network culture, and how he differs from the known forms of this kind of subject: folk collective and professional author. What are the main ways of cultural genesis in network culture, and how do they differ from the already known ones: tradition and creativity. Finally, what is the nature of key artifacts arising in the context of virtual reality and around it. After all, we are not only talking about spiritual culture and its forms, such as religion, science and arts, but also about material culture, which acts as a derivative in relation to the Internet, i.e. about a new type of person, social institutions and things.
The main issues for discussion are:
- Network culture as a historical type. Tradition and innovation in the network.
- The subject of network culture: professional author, collective and dilettante intersubjectivity.
- Performance in the network as the meaning of life. Fixation of the personal in public space.
- Art in the network: image and defamiliarization of the real.
- Science online: verification and its boundaries.
- Digital reality as a suggestive and immersive artifact.
- Network culture and postmodernity.
