COVID-19, Digital Tracking Control and Chinese Cosmotechnology

Jana S. Rošker

doi:10.4312/as.2022.10.1.345-369

Authors

Jana S. ROŠKER University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2022.10.1.345-369

Keywords:

digital technology, ontology of digital objects, China and the Sinic region, COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to numerous global problems that can only be solved on a global scale. Especially in light of the good performance of the Sinic region in containing and eliminating the coronavirus, the importance of intercultural dialogue between East and West became even more evident. In this context, this paper explores the role of digital technologies and the underlying ontology of digital objects in China as well as in the wider Sinic region. Indeed, the third millennium, which has just begun and will witness the accelerating trends of global warming and most likely the deepening of the gap between rich and poor, numerous wars, and new pandemics, will certainly be marked by the development of digital technologies. Therefore, the paper investigates the specific features of traditional Sinic perceptions of technology as such, as well as their ideational underpinnings, which certainly influence specific Sinic perceptions of digital objects. This will, I hope, provide us with a better understanding of the cultural conditionality of differences and commonalities in the global processes of digitalization and their ontological underpinnings, so that we can pay more attention to both the dangers and the opportunities that cross-cultural interactions in this area can offer us.

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