Revisiting ‘Old Questions’: Perspectives amid Contemporary Digital Transformations

The aim of this work is to define fundamentally new, substantive answers to traditional questions that have challenged scientists for centuries within the context of contemporary digital transformations. The central research question focuses on the fundamental reinterpretation of “old” questions in a changed world. The paper explores W.R. Ashby’s law of requisite variety, the concept of the Panopticon by J. Bentham and M. Foucault, and Plato’s allegory of the cave, assessing their relevance and applicability to contemporary conditions of state and societal functioning in a new technological stage of digital development. This study demonstrates that digital technological transformations fail to generate fundamentally novel substantive frameworks for interpreting the processes occurring in critical spheres of state and societal dynamics. Instead, the enduring relevance of established classical theories, conceptual paradigms, systemic laws governing state administration, and foundational principles of interaction between the state and society remain evident. Traditional ideas about mass consciousness – its role in shaping behavioral patterns and the information and communication foundation for constructing worldviews and mass perceptions of reality – do not undergo fundamental changes within the context of digitalization. Rather, they align seamlessly with existing traditional concepts and approaches. The results of the study indicate that the substantive aspects of digital solutions to “old” questions largely correspond to existing traditional answers and solutions, which retain a high explanatory potential even in the contemporary era.