DIGITALIZATION OF THE ECONOMY: FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE
The modern economy is characterized by the action of active trends of constant increase in the complexity of various systems in which human activity is carried out: social, technical, economic, environmental, etc. These are the conditions of the new, post-industrial, digital economy, which have a significant impact not only on the activities of all economic entities without exception, but also on its final results. At the same time, both the creation of fundamentally new systems and the preservation of existing structures, which, interacting with each other, will allow to establish effective interaction between all systems, are becoming urgent. In this process, a significant role is played by the Internet, which over the past half century has passed several key stages in its development, ranging from the Internet of machines, the Internet of people and the Internet of things, and ending with the formation of conditions for the development of the Internet of animals in the future. The authors, having considered various stages of development of the Internet and a role of the person in it, state that in all time periods the Internet actively developed in parallel to new, rather high, requirements which were put forward by time and society and with which it was necessary for mankind and will be considered.