DIGITAL DISTANCE: A HORIZON OF PERSPECTIVES OR A LABYRINTH OF THE LEVELING OF MEANING?

Abstract

With the onset of COVID-19, humanity, on a global level, has been engulfed in social distancing and self-isolation. In the Ukrainian context, these phenomena have also intensified in connection with the war. Today, the distance has become an almost usual component of everyday life. The distance that was first maintained in public cities due to illness has now become almost an apologia for communication as the digital format has come to the forefront of any interaction. Both collective and interpersonal interactions are absorbed by total virtuality. If, at the height of the pandemic, distancing was driven by the pragmatics of necessity, which was actually only intensified by the martial law, now we can see that the practice of breaking ties has formed, on the one hand, a social habit of a kind of permanent stay in an emergency situation, and on the other, it has become norm and conscious refusal. This state of affairs makes one think, because distancing affects all spheres of human existence, including the educational process. If we turn to the assessment of this phenomenon, then the actual transfer of education to the digital format is somewhat controversial. And here the problem is not so much technical support (its absence) or the impossibility of teaching/assimilating the material qualitatively, but rather a more profound shift caused by the gradual transition to a detached mode: a completely different sample of culture existing in a limited space is being formed. Actually, we will try to consider this in our scientific research.