Uppsala Forum Guest Lecture: The Digital Age Implications and the Transformation of Experience

The digital age built on technologies has features that significantly change the experience of individuals and communities. The four manifestations of the digital age – “digital neurotization”, simplification, categorization and “information fatigue” – may aggravate polarization of opinions, undermine democracy and justice.

Today’s technologies construct individuals experience in a way distinctly different from the past, and they are forming what could be called “package perception”. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the growing algorithmization, as well as the desire of technology owners to keep us engaged and sell us something – goods, services, or views. Being intangible and invisible such technologies also strive to become all-encompassing, permeating the entire picture of the world. Their almost imperceptible impact can change the very way individuals think and perceive reality, in particular shift in trust and changes in decision-making.

Yulia Razmetaeva, PhD in Law, Head of the Center for Law, Ethics and Digital Technologies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and an Associate Professor at the Department of Theory and Philosophy of Law of the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, Uppsala University visiting researcher.

Yulia is the author of two books: Human rights as a fundamental value of civil society (2013) and Doctrine and Practice of Human Rights Protection (2018). Her research interests are at the inresection of law, ethics and digital technologies relation. She has authored or co-authored articles on these topics in journals such as Phenomenology and Mind, TalTech Journal of European Studies, Access to Justice in Eastern Europe.

Since 2016, she has been an expert on international projects dedicated to law, values and technology. In 2020-2021 it is a project Applying Human Rights to Digital Tech. Since 2021 Yulia became a member of Groupement de recherche 2092 Techniques et production dans l’histoire, a federation of laboratories, researchers and curators in the history of technology, based in France and open internationally.

Her last conference presentations include such topics as Technological Neutrality and Religious Polarization in the Digital Age (France, September 2021) and Today’s Technologies, Law and Artificial Reality (Malaysia, November 2021). She organised and hosted a Trust in the Digital Age web symposium (May 2022).