Significance of information environment in modern society

One of the most essential factors of personality development, their creative activity is considered the environment, so the interest to this phenomenon from researcher’s viewpoint has remained unaltered for a long period of time. The environment is ingenuously attributed to social and pedagogical requirements to elicit the certain environment influence on personality formation and advancement. The world undergoing rapid changes towards an informational society under which we regard the one where easy and available access to data from all over the world is provided, where the main subject of labour for the majority of people is information and knowledge, where the labour tool is information-communicative technology, has stipulated a new advantage to notion “environment” and its constituent part – information environment. [1]

Notion “environment” was offered in a wide and narrow sense. In the wide meaning of the word, it reflects information processes existing in the world overall, i.e. in animate and inanimate nature as well as in a society.

When speaking about its narrow meaning it is interesting to note that information environment is an integral part of human environment presented by economic, political, cultural, educational and other spheres. Peculiarity of such environment consists in the fact that it is created by people in their interests to realize their own needs.

The main feature of our modern society is the lack of social-cultural and psychological barriers between different countries and peoples. There is a steady tendency towards openness of the world and the individual to the human and social interaction worldwide, person’s withdrawal from the limits of habitual milieu into fundamentally novel area. Knowledge acquired through experience and study embraced the person’s mind has a great influence on their consciousness giving a fresh impulse to needs, abilities and scopes helping to specify and introduce practically unfamiliar nature of communication. It moulds a new way of life, new conditions and forms of obtaining information acquisition and assignment. The informational society represents modern information environment in a global aspect.

An individual appears the main information user. At the same time, information is created, obtained, collected, transformed, conveyed and kept in compliance with personal information requirements. That is why a person turns up the creator of their information environment and the chief element. That is human beings who ensure their existence and development, determine their form and content. Professor of Sociology V.A. Yadov gave the following definition of a personality: “A personality is the integrity of personal social characteristics, the product of social development and the inclusion of an individual in the system of social relations.”[5] According to this point of view, the personality is developed thanks to different kinds of social-cultural experience. At the same time, one can’t deny the existence of innate intelligence that has a significant influence on the formation and growth of personal traits. Whatever approach to a personality is used: the activity approach by L.S.Begotsky, the role concept by J. Meade, the humanistic theory of personality by A. Maslov, socio-cultural theory by K. Horney, a personality, first and foremost, acts as a system with their inner spiritual world, consciousness and self-awareness, thanks to which they carry out their livelihoods. It is a systematic approach to the personality that allows expressing their essence.

The personal potential supplies the system with the possibility of preserving the existing state and processes of self-development. The level of personal potential development depends to great extent on inner factors as well as outer social surroundings.

The intellectual potential allows a personality to adapt to the conditions of the outside world, to perform the activity to ensure their sustainable, balanced and relatively autonomous from the society subsistence.

The creative potential reflects the orientation of relationships of all abilities attributable to a person towards transformation and concentration providing selfdevelopment and self-improvement of the individual. Moreover, if the implementation of the intellectual potential conforms a personality to the world, then the implementation of the creative potential conforms the world to personality needs.

Spirituality plays the role of not only as an indicator of personality disposition, but it is regarded as a factor of personality growth. “Spirituality serves as a criterion of the certain hierarchical existence of values, goals and senses; the highest level of spiritual assimilation of the human world is signified in it.”[2]. Thus, the spiritual potential determines aims and missions of evolution, and internally enriches the personality.

The core of personal life activity under existing conditions of society informatization is their ability to consume and process information, consequently creatively own this foundational resource. Personality, “passing” information through themselves, processes it shaping experience knowledge. Data collection, its integration are a prerequisite for personality maturing. According to ROMIR Monitoring, statistics there were over 57 million Runet users in 2016.

Personal self-development is characterized by directivity. It can be both progressive and regressive. It greatly depends on the quality of selected information. Spiritual intentions, ideals, principles, norms of morality related to the sphere of valuables of a specific person, comes forward as a "filter" in the selection of information. [3,4]

Objective circumstances, which are typical for today, determine the formation and development of personality not by themselves but through personal involvement in these conditions. A means of the inclusion is the information exchange manifested as an interaction procedure between the personality and the environment. One of the main interactive forms becomes a process distinguished by application of information technology that has been entering every aspect of human activity.

It is also essential to pay heed to the fact that up-today technologies proffer options to streamline the course content and teaching approaches and to make learning more interesting and profound.

Summarizing the article, one can conclude that information environment is the factor requiring fundamentally new human adaptation. Specificity of modern information environment leads to the correction of existing natural and social mechanisms of human alteration and of working out new ones. Information technologies having become the core of modern civilization change not just the quality and content of modern people’s life but they try to transform the very way of their being in the world.