Plato and the modern cave of big data

Abstract

Since the last third of the 20th century, the nature of the impact of technological innovations on society and culture has become explosive. Culture is spiralling into a turbulent state where the consequences of technological progress are so multifarious that they produce completely new entities, previously unimaginable. Technology, rather than being a mere aid to humanity, grows into a dominating factor of its own. The changes are so drastic we can now rightfully speak of the transformation of culture, manifesting as a destruction of culture as a system of varied local cultures and emergence of one global culture, where one culture or a group of cultures inevitably assumes the position of dominance. Technological progress is not just something external to the society and the individual, it saturates them, sometimes even modifying them to suit the technology in question. Fundamental philosophical concepts of the world and undergoing a profound change and development. In this context surprisingly relevant is the old fable of Plato’s cave as a metaphor for human existence on earth. It can even be read as predicting some of the consequences of digitalisation. In some cases, the image of reality can acquire the properties of imitation, removed from any truth and essence when a shadow is indistinguishable from reality. The global communication space can be analogous to Plato’s cave in its contemporary form: the cave of big data. Its conditions of existence are the growing human reliance on big data when human consciousness becomes the object of computer simulation.

Keywords:

технологические инновации, культура, трансформация, общество, цифровизация, big data, Платон, глобальная коммуникация