Being (more) Human in a Digitized World
Being (more) Human in a Digitized World
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在数字化世界中成为（更多）人
DOI：
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发表时间：
2020
影响因子：
5.9
通讯作者：
Ravindra Babu Tallamraju
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
P. Seetharaman;Saji K. Mathew;M. Sein;Ravindra Babu Tallamraju
在我们为本期特刊撰写客座社论之际，世界正面临着抗击前所未有的covid - 19危机的巨大挑战，其影响的严重程度尚不得而知。然而，我们大多数人都是乐观主义者，我们相信世界将在适当的时候度过难关，尽管它可能对我们日常生活的社会经济方面造成损害。我们所知道的是，我们已经越来越退回到数字化的世界。当信息系统学者以鸟瞰的视角，退一步观察世界对危机的反应时，有两个方面似乎在它们无可争议的作用中是显而易见的。首先，世界利用“累积文化”在潜在的（尽管是暂时的）解决方案中徘徊的方式，拒绝一些，试验一些，欣然采用少数；第二，我们对信息技术的依赖已经越来越大，为了尽可能不受干扰地维持我们的日常生活，我们对信息技术的依赖突然增加。这两者在很多方面都与特刊“在数字化世界中更人性化”的主题有关——“积累文化”是人类的一个核心特征，以及对信息技术的日益依赖及其象征数字化世界的众多化身。在日益数字化的世界背景下，人类物种累积的文化进化体现了人类的典型精神（莎士比亚的“尘埃”），反映在积累的实践工具包、社会习得的行为、复杂的技术和复杂的制度中（Boyd和Richerson 1996； Shipton和Nielsen 2015； Tomasello 1999）。社会认知的过程要求人类将彼此理解为“像自我一样的有意识的代理人”，而社会文化学习的过程（Tomasello 1999）催化了累积文化的进化。社会认知还体现在我们的情感联系和创造性追求上。当今高度数字化的社会环境通过其对文化学习、社会参考和墨守成规的传播（Henrich 2015）的支持，强化了累积文化，这些行为传统上在人类学研究中被观察到。信息技术的固有特点，特别是在加强人类智力的两个方面-工作记忆和认知能力，只是促进了这种加强。虽然信息技术和系统带来的商业利益不再是信息系统研究中争议的问题，但信息技术设备、应用和平台的使用所产生的伦理和社会影响继续占据着当代围绕技术的辩论的中心舞台。当代数字技术使社会互动的方式发生了重大变化，无论是作为组织边界中的个人，还是作为更大社会背景中的个人。我们对这些数字技术的使用使一种文化成为可能，这种文化的独特性源于我们如何寻找、感知和消费信息本身的转变。这是Priya Seetharaman priyas@iimcal.ac.in
As we write this guest editorial for this special issue, the world is confronted with the enormous challenge of combating an unprecedented never-before-in-history crisis of Covid19, the magnitude of its impact far from known. Yet, optimists as most of us are, we believe the world will tide over it in due course despite the damage that it may cause to the socioeconomic aspects of our everyday life. What we do know is that we have retreated more and more into the digitized world. As information systems academics taking bird’s eye view, taking a step back to observe the world in its response to the crisis, two aspects seem to be stark in their undisputed role. First, the manner in which the world has drawn upon the “cumulative culture” to meander through potential, albeit temporary solutions, rejecting some, experimenting with some others and readily adopting few others; second, the sudden spike in our already growing dependence on information technology to aid undisturbed continuance, to the extent possible, in our everyday living. Both these, in many ways are related to the theme of the special issue “Being (more) human in a digitized world” – “cumulative culture” being a core distinguishing feature of humanness and the increasing dependence on information technology and its many avatars symbolizing the digitized world. In the context of an increasingly digitized world, the human species’ cumulative cultural evolution embodies the quintessential spirit (Shakespeare’s ‘dust’) of humanness reflected in the accumulated toolkit of practices, socially learned behaviors, sophisticated technologies and complex institutions (Boyd and Richerson 1996; Shipton and Nielsen 2015; Tomasello 1999). The very process of social cognition that required humans to understand each other as “intentional agents like the self” coupled with the process of social-cultural learning (Tomasello 1999) has catalyzed the evolution of a cumulative culture. The social cognition is also reflected in our emotional connect and our creative pursuits. The intensely digital social environments of the day reinforce the cumulative culture through their affordances for cultural learning, social referencing as well as for conformist transmission (Henrich 2015), behaviors that have traditionally been observed in anthropological studies. The innate characteristics of information technology especially in strengthening the two dimensions of human intelligence – working memory and cognitive capabilities, have merely facilitated this reinforcement. While business benefits from information technology and systems are no longer a matter of dispute in information systems research, ethical and social implications arising from the use of information technology devices, applications and platforms continue to occupy center stage in contemporary debates surrounding technology. Contemporary digital technologies have allowed significant changes to the way social interactions are effected both as individuals in organizational boundaries but also as individuals in larger social contexts. Our use of these digital technologies has enabled a culture whose uniqueness arises from the transformation in how we seek, perceive and consume information itself. This * Priya Seetharaman priyas@iimcal.ac.in