Digital Philosophy of History: Problem Statement

The article raises the problem of the possibility of creating a digital philosophy of history. The initial thesis of the work states the fact of the crisis of the traditional philosophy of history, the absence of meta-narratives which introduce global historiosophical concepts, and the unsuitability of the existing categorial apparatus for describing the realities of the digital world. The crisis of the philosophy of history, primarily of the formational and civilizational approaches, has led to the emergence of new directions in historical science, such as microhistory, memory studies and intellectual history. These directions improved the methods of historical cognition which, however, came at the expense of the creation of macrohistorical models of the past. The accumulation of historical information paradoxically does not lead to the appearance of large theoretical studies of the universal history of humankind. The attention of historians focuses on the history of a man or individual communities and events. According to the authors, the enormous amount of historical information that a single researcher cannot cover leads to the fact that the efforts of "a smart mob" (i.e. Internet users) create the philosophy of history today. The authors consider the new philosophy of history as global hypertext linked by the cross-reference system. At the same time, humanitarian science was enriched with new methods of cognition, that led to the shaping of various areas of digital humanities, including digital history, which in the article suggests not only the use of information and computer technologies in the study of the past, but also the history of a digital society. In this regard, the digital philosophy of history can become a scientific discipline designed to create a theory of a digital society, conceptualizing its history and outlining the contours of future development.