There and Back Again: A (Reversed) Vygotskian Perspective on Digital Socialization

Abstract

Among the most important current advances of the contemporary material and non-material culture is the development of digital technologies as new tools or instruments of the human mind. Their reciprocal influence on the human mind is, in turn, becoming one of the front edges of research in both personality and cognitive psychology and neighboring disciplines, such as philosophy of mind, neurobiology, and cultural anthropology. The unprecedented speed of technological development, together with the merging of digital and wireless technologies with human daily routines across the planet, makes this research quite complicated. One of the firstpriority tasks for psychology is to develop methodology which could become a foundation for the study of co-development of human mind and digital technologies, including both common-use devices and applications for data generation, storage, and processing.