The Ontological Meaning of Digitalization: Merging of Matter and Language

The article postulates the ontological meaning of digitalization, in addition to the obvious technical and political ones. Digitalization is understood as informatization to the utmost extent, i.e. the extension of the action of semantic-syntactic operations to an unlimited number of objects and the expansion of the information and linguistic area (realm) within existence. It is argued that digitalization is the fundamental transformation of existence. The essence of this transformation is the merge of the material and linguistic realms of being. The author stands on an objective and idealistic position in understanding the world. The world is understood as being – a structure which logically exhausts the capacity of existence and consists of three realms: material, linguistic and conscious. The logic of merging the material and linguistic realms is seen in their unification in relation to consciousness. Instead of three, there are two realms – a united material-linguistic one (“materiolanguage”, as the author calls it) versus a conscious one. Ontological inequality emerges: while there used to be a balance of three harmoniously delimited realms in the previous structure of existence, then as a result of the transformation the united material-linguistic area becomes infinitely dominant in relation to the conscious one. Consciousness turns out to be “permanently squeezed” and devoid of its own area, but a fundamentally irreducible ontological link. The unification of matter and language is carried out from the side of the language realm (“expansion of language”). The key idea of the article is that language, according to its inherent intention of signification and the disjunctive movement of detailing definitions, “breaks through” matter itself as a fundamental level of the semantic homogeneity and absorbs the material realm. This penetration leads to the ontological replacement of things, as the author describes it, and deprives consciousness of the harmonizing boundary formed by the material level which distances consciousness from the sociolinguistic realm. The described ontological transformation is regarded as an ontology of absolute evil. In addition to the main conclusion, the problems of transhumanism are touched upon and criticized. 

Keywords: digitalization, existence, realms of being, language, matter, consciousness, ontology, homogeneity, meaning, transhumanism