PARADIGM SHIFT GENERATED BY ICT

Abstract

Development of information and communication technologies (ICT) including the digital networks becoming generally accessible nearly in all over the world commenced changes similar to that of the steam engine and the industrial revolution: these changes re-order our world we have been accustomed to. These changes, additionally, have attributes we have never seen, a “new, different world is being created out of nothing(?)” and bigger and bigger proportion of our physical activities is being done in this new virtual world from everyday shopping up to scientific research. Our virtual world and its interference with our everyday life results in, or demands, such changes in our thinking that we can, or better to say, speak about a paradigm shift.
It this paper I'll show the most interesting and important phenomena and their effect on our everyday life of this paradigm shift that means that a lot of rules we have been accustomed to for centuries are not valid any more. One of them is, for example, that you will know that your car has not been stolen (yet) if it is on the same place you left it while, on the other hand, it is not valid for your computerized data.
I'm investigating, additionally, the effect of these phenomena on our thinking; more precisely I'm investigating in what way our thinking should change in order to better accommodate to the new paradigm of the virtual world - or to accommodate at all.