Humans in a digital world Prof Alta van der Merwe
The concept of Society 5.0 was first introduced in Japan. It formed part of the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan, and follows the hunting society (Society 1.0), agricultural society (Society 2.0), industrial society (Society 3.0) and information society (Society 4.0). The Cabinet Office of Japan defines Society 5.0 as “a humancentered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space”.
Bruno Salgues, in his book titled Society 5.0: Industry of the future, technologies, methods and tools (published in 2018), urges that more research needs to be conducted to understand the situation of humans in a digital world. He argues that humans are defined by different needs, and that digital technology allows one to respond to the need for knowledge if one knows how to make use of the tools of the digital world.
STRENGTHS OF HUMANS IN A DIGITAL WORLD According to Salgues, the first and foremost strength in the digital world is access to information. Humans now have access to information as and when needed, with the only limitation being the applicability of the information provided by search engines. Researchers are constantly improving context-relevant searches using techniques such as frequency for relevance where search engines provide information according to popularity. 52
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Access to information also links to opportunities for skills training where humans now not only have access to unlimited online courses, but institutions are constantly renewing curricula to be more relevant in a changing world.
WEAKNESSES OF HUMANS IN A DIGITAL WORLD A key weakness experienced in the digital world is information overload. We often find ourselves asking what we should do next, what we should look at next, what information is the most important and how to distinguish what to spend time on. Information overload – also known as infobesity – is where one struggles to make decisions since there is too much information pertaining to an issue. As a result of access to information across national boundaries, the influence of the nation states is also disappearing and being reduced. A final concern is the time humans spend on media, particularly as new phenomena such as gamefication and social media addiction emerge.
