The ambivalent core of modernity: Internet

Abstract

The modern virtual space of the Internet has two opposing basic trends. First of all, the digital world of the Internet is a timeless, ahistorical formation in which the main structural unit (it is also the lexical and ontic atom of this world), namely, the binary code functions in a timeless, simultaneous mode. Since the virtual world is now the world of total communication, both timelessness and historicism necessarily affect the mentality of its users. On the other hand, this virtual world itself — which makes it, perhaps, an object of cultural heritage — is a kind of repository of the past: electronic text, audio and video files, correspondence, texts, photographs, etc. This layer of the Internet world undoubtedly serves to preserve and revive the now fading historical consciousness.