The Digital Age and Humanity 2.0

The digital age is the period in which digital technologies (e.g., computers, the internet, smartphones, artificial intelligence, cloud systems, etc.) have begun to play a central role in people’s processes related to information, communication, and production. The digital age is the latest stage of the information society. Looking at historical processes, it is seen that the first steps towards the information age date back to approximately 12.000 years ago, beginning with the agricultural society. In these years, people learned to farm and settled down for the first time, and the agricultural society emerged. The agricultural society is the form of society in which people transitioned from a nomadic lifestyle based on hunting to a settled life, where the first grains were planted and cultivated, animals were domesticated, and an economic and social order based on agricultural production was established. Therefore, the agricultural society is the most important turning point in human history in the transition to the information age. Because the foundations of settled life, social structures, states, art, and science were laid with the agricultural society. This process continued until approximately the beginning of the 18th century, along with state formation, increasing population, the development of writing, and the need for production and management. After the 17th century, with the introduction of machinery for production, agricultural society gave way to industrial society. Industrial society is a model where production is carried out by machines, and industry and factories replace agriculture, shaping the economic and social structure. The rise of industrial society, along with migration from rural areas to cities, and the need for education and technical knowledge, led to the development of engineering, science, and technical professions. The industrial revolution, which began in England around 1750, spread throughout the world by the end of the 19th century. After the 1950s, industrial society was replaced by the information society, where people constantly need to learn, access to information is easy, and a lifelong learning culture exists. The information society is a societal structure built on the production, sharing, and use of information. In this society, information forms the basis of economic, social, cultural, and political activities. Unlike industrial society, the information society develops through the production of information and the use of technology, rather than physical labor and material production. The information age, or digital age, has also marked the beginning of Humanity 2.0.
This study evaluates the effects of digital technologies, which have developed alongside the information society, on humans and presents some conclusions.