Technogenic sign system: conceptualizing the semiotic-technological foundation of the digital environment

Despite the wide-ranging interdisciplinary analysis of society informatization, a philosophical and methodological basis for understanding the essence of the new type of semiotic organization of digital society that it has generated is currently lacking. The aim of this research is to construct an integrative concept for identifying the essential characteristics of the digital environment, reflecting the fundamental nature of the interaction between technological and symbolic systems in the digital age. The work carries out a critical analysis of common metaphors (“digital reality”, “digital space”), revealing their limitations and ontologizing potential. Based on a historical-philosophical analysis, the dialectic of the mutual influence of technologies and symbolic systems, which led to the emergence of modern techno-symbolic unity, is demonstrated. The main result of the research is the development of the notion of technogenic sign system, which is proposed as a conceptual framework for understanding the digital environment. This notion captures the indissoluble unity of technological infrastructure and semiotic processes; reveals the architecture of the system; explains the mechanisms of technological determination of symbolic existence through unification at the level of binary code and protocols; and identifies the key role of artificial intelligence as an active agent that transforms semantic topography and manages symbolic flows. The scientific novelty of the research lies in overcoming the conceptual deficit through the proposal of a new notion that makes it possible to represent the digital environment as a holistic phenomenon, in abandoning speculative constructs in favor of a systemic analysis of the immanent mechanisms of semiotic-technological determination.