Мобильные технологии и информационный век: распространение смартфонов как тенденция глобализации

Article

Abstract

[In Russian]

IT innovations are a main trend of the early 21st century. Contemporary technologies are responsible for the hugest and fast growing markets in nowadays global economy. IT innovations penetrated into different spheres and became an integral part of almost every system and structure of daily life. Moreover, IT is a large and significant part of contemporary development of modernity and probably the biggest transformation of social, cultural and economic spheres that took a place after intensive global processes had started and brought us to the epoch called by social theorists as «the second modernity». Right now one of the main elements of these changes is a rising of smartphone popularity that changes types of production, processing and transmitting of information which in its turn challenges local practices of individuals.

The influence of IT innovations forces us to reconsider such theoretical concepts as «identity», «mobility» and «local practices». It also reinforces the value of objects for the understanding of these phenomena and creates a new dimension for researches. We deal with half-virtual and half physical ecosystems. In this article the author will consider smartphones as a key element of contemporary globalism processes that are trying to universalize human practices and diminish the value of local contexts.