Socio-cognitive practices of grouping of cyberintelligentsia

Аннотация

Bakshutova E.V.  Socio-cognitive practices of grouping of cyberintelligentsia // Psychological science and practice: State of the Art. Collected papers / Ed. Kostrigin A.A. Chicago, 2017. P. 84-88.

The article discusses a number of new problems for social psychology: the transformation of the social into virtual, the emergence of a new social formation ‑ cyberintelligentsia, the problem of preservation of the cultural practices, the psychological mechanisms of group formation, the functions of the digital intelligentsia.

It is generally known that intellectual activity is currently moving from the ordinary reality to virtual (including virtual museums, universities, political parties, interest communities), the intelligentsia is transformed into cyberintelligentsia not simply by the "habitat", but, probably, in the relations with the new socio-cognitive mechanisms of group formation.

It is important to understand whether the intelligentsia has changed under the new conditions of imposing cultural systems. Are such socio-cognitive forms of group formation as conceptualization, ideologization, discursive construction, characterizing the intelligentsia in traditional cultural practices, preserved in virtual reality (Bakshutova, 2015)? This question arises in connection with the fact that the classical intelligentsia has lost an audience for "cultural preaching" for a number of reasons. First, the events of recent decades have discredited the belief in the liberating mission of the intelligentsia; secondly, the Internet provided an opportunity to write, speak and be heard for everyone; thirdly, the classical intelligentsia underwent socialization in the conditions of written culture, and its social interaction, even technologically mediated, is oriented toward the same audience for which the value of literature, reflection, and textual reflection is "memorable". In particular, educational innovations also seek to "adapt" old technologies to the new generation sociocognitive practices.

In recent decades, there has appeared a completely new cultural practice of the intelligentsia ‑ actually virtual, or rather cybernetic. This is likely to include people who "equip" the Internet ‑ create websites, simulators, games, digitize museums and libraries, create electronic magazines and television, write programs, hackers, gamers, etc. (For example, since 1999 there has been the journal "Hacker", containing not only information "about harware", but also discussions on ethics of hacking, security, politics). These are, indeed, the intellectuals of the new formation, multiplying knowledge, and possessing special cognitive characteristics and personal qualities. And these are people who create not only the image of the new reality, but also the very new reality, and therefore, new semantic cultural codes, patterns of thinking behavior, and perhaps a new cyberconservatism and cyberliberalism. Cyberthinking is likely to characterize the generation of young people in general: an active user of various resources and Internet capabilities is mastering such a skill as "multi-task", that is, the ability to solve several tasks simultaneously. With this skill, the ability to build long-term life plans and work for the future, responsibility, perseverance, readiness for risk, elbow and teamwork skills, the ability to take responsibility, the willingness to master and effectively apply sophisticated analytical computer programs (Bek, Ujejd , 2006; Greenfield, 2009; Vojskunskij, 2010) ‑ all that, according to the authors of the collection "Milestones" (”Vekhi”), was not enough for the Russian intelligentsia.

The cognitive turn in science and philosophy draws the attention of researchers to the fact that "cognitive processes need to be understood not as existing along with other types of individual and collective activity (motivations, aspirations, struggle for power, defending their interests, etc.), but as something that permeates them and becomes central to understanding everything else "(Zav'jalova, 2012). This is of great importance not only for the individual subject, but also for the collective ‑ the group nomination of reality determines the development and content of individual consciousnesses.