The Increasing Role of the Digital Body in the Human Capital: changes in the nature if communications
The research is conditioned by the necessity to analyze new opportunities for the development of the human capital and the challenges to it, caused by the digital transformation. It is substantiated that under the influence of the time arrow effects (I. Prigozhin) the development of the human capital goes at an accelerating pace and in a more complicated way in the context of the formation of the complex socio-digital-natural reality. The process of the digitalization has an ambivalent impact on the content and character of the human capital: on the one hand, individuals, starting from their early socialization, use smart machines for self-development, communicate not only with their parents and peers, as it used to be, but practically with people around the world, grasping the diversity of cultures and creating their “digital bodies”; however, on the other hand, the digitalization depletes the values of their own world of life, minimizes face-to-face communication, dehumanizes education and training; however, on the other hand, digitalization dilutes the values of their own life world, minimizes face-to-face communications, and dehumanizes the education at “McUniversities” (G. Ritzer). Accordingly, there are limits to how the digital transformation can be used to develop the human capital. The challenges of COVID-19 to the functionality of the human capital at both the global and local levels are particularly addressed. At the same time, in the author’s opinion, U. Beck’s idea of the “metamorphosis of the world”, expressed in the emergence of the “positive side effects of the bads”, is applicable to the pandemic. In this connection, it is argued that the qualitatively new opportunities for the development of the human capital under conditions of the socio-natural turbulence and the coexistence of people with viruses are emerging in a non-linear way, including: the emergence of the homo epidemiologicus as a new social type - an individual who during his/her life reflexes to the epidemiological situation; the transition to the digital medical surveillance with a humanistic orientation; the distant treatment of those who have fallen ill according to the data of their “digital body”; the creation of the prerequisites for recognizing the unity of the human capital of the peoples of the world.