Axiology of Imitative Communication: Formulation of the Problem

The article explores the hypothesis that modern communication is taking on a special form today. It can be called imitative communication, in which information processing technologies play a very important role. The author derives the origin of this communication from the commercial, consumer status of social information, which in the early stages of the emergence of media reality contributed to the development of market relations. Thanks to the development of technology, the quality of imitation of reality becomes an independent factor infl uencing the deconstruction of a person in the information process. In these conclusions, the author relies on his own long-term studies of the history of television. It was this mass media that laid the foundations of imitative reality, tearing off the perception of reality from its real development and laying the foundations for technological identifi cation of a person to the detriment of traditional personal efforts. Imitative reality has a connection with the phenomenon of the game. The author carries out a phenomenological rethinking of the game in comparison with its classical defi nitions. The game appears as a form of detection of ontological boundaries in which the personality is located. However, with today’s development of technology, the game is turning into a way to replace reality, losing its original status as an identifi er of social meanings. With this interpretation, many currently unresolved problems, for example, the problem of computer addiction, acquire the features of distinct social deviations that have specifi c ways of treatment. As a perspective for the development of the existing situation, the author calls the reditization (return) of the individual to reality, while virtual reality should acquire the status of another utopia in the history of mankind.