The existential crisis of the digital age: will higher education save the human being?

The authors reveal the technical-technological and socio-anthropological origins of the existential crisis of the digital era. Digital civilization, opening up opportunities for humanity to create a new socio-technological order, transforms a person and their social existence in a problematic way. The current social situation, presented by the authors as a complex of characteristics that emphasize its instability, generates socio-psychological and moral tension at the level of the individual. The techno-information envelope of the anthroposociosphere forces the digital person to rethink and, in accordance with the era, solve the eternal questions of being. The authors draw attention to the imperative requirement of the digital age to develop human capital and anthropological potential in the direction of expanding social-humanistic competencies and overcoming the “cognitive barrier”. The contemporary social-humanistic imperative is addressed to the institution of education responsible for the social and moral production and reproduction of a person. A special mission is assigned to universities as centers for training professionals, in whose potential is the desire for self-realization, for the formation of new types of activity. The most important thing in higher education is the upbringing of “humane” people who are able to overcome the existential crisis and solve the global problems of modernity. For boosting of the humanities in higher education, it is necessary to widely incorporate philosophical, social-humanistic, art-aesthetic and ethical disciplines into the educational process of higher education and to organically integrate them with the study of natural sciences, mathematics, information technology, general professional and special subjects. The authors analyze the foreign and Russian experience of boosting of the humanities in higher education, offer a diffuse model of interaction between “physicists” and “lyricists” in the studying process, and substantiate the relevance of social-humanistic component of higher education from a futurological point of view.