Personal identity in the era of Digital Transformation

The article is devoted to the socio-philosophical analysis of the problem of personal identity in the era of digital transformation, a new communicative reality. Relevance. Digital transformation is one of the national development goals of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030. In modern society, the importance of online identification and virtual spaces of the Internet may increase to such an extent that they will be equivalent to social benefits, real-world property, which must necessarily be regulated by law. For example, if a user’s profile on special online platforms such as Facebook, Vkontakte or Google is necessary for normal life in society, then its deprivation may be equivalent to the deprivation of an individual’s identity card or driver’s license. Nowadays, it is impossible to deny the rapid development of information and communication technologies, the digitalization of almost all spheres of an individual’s life. Purpose of the study. The purpose of this article is to study the influence of virtual (digital) space on the processes of identification of an individual. Digital (network) identity in the article refers to the creation by an individual of his digital projection in the information and communication space, in particular in social networks. To achieve this goal, the socio-philosophical analysis was based on systematic and comparative approaches, on modern domestic and foreign theoretical materials devoted to the problem of personal identity in the virtual space of the Internet: research by M. Castells on the influence of network technologies on identity; the identity theory of Harvard University professor H. Bhabha; works on the study of network identity by E. Trufanova, A. Zhichkina; studies of identity representation in the online environment by D. Boyd and N. Ellison. The results obtained indicate that the virtual (digital) space is becoming a place of communication and transformation of personal identity. The proposed study focuses on the fact that digital personality profiles in social networks provide freedom that traditional static identification has never had. The scientific novelty of the research consists in substantiating the connection of virtual (digital) transformation with transformations of the individual’s personal identity. Directions for further research. It is possible to outline two ways of further research of the stated topic within the framework of socio-philosophical analysis: 1) in connection with such a problem of modern society as the identity crisis, the “search for oneself and one’s own way”; 2) the problem of personal identity in the context of the “I am Another” relationship in the conditions of modern Internet communication