Anthropology of the Internet

Abstract

Humans play a central role in the shaping and development of the Internet. What is typical of a person in the Internet environment? Is there a specific trait by which one can distinguish a person of the Internet world from a person who does not live in this world? Is it possible to find common ground between these people? It would be interesting to answer the following question: what awaits us in the case of total “migration” to the Internet? A person of the Internet world has no substance without encounters with the network. He walks around the world and builds the world with the click of a mouse. Through his interaction, man changes the world, the changed world, in turn, changes him, and these changes again provoke a change in the world. Man builds up space and time in front of him by button interaction, i.e. space and time are linked into wholeness, structured through human communications. The whole plays a predominant role in the formation of a system of any nature. Wholeness is always communicative; it is achieved through communications. Consequently, different opportunities for communication can produce different spatial and temporal wholes. A person of the Internet world (as a person who reads and a person who writes) is a particular case of a “communicating person” in a holistic space-time world. The Internet makes us understand this and rethink the emergence of new possibilities for communication in the form of new speeds.