MOSCOW, October 3 – Novosti. UrFU scientists, together with partners, are working to ensure the well-being of modern people and future generations. Such ambitious tasks are set in the project “Human Well-Being in the Conditions of Digital Transformation”, the press service of the university reports.
According to researchers from the Ural Federal University (UrFU), the parameters of human existence have changed radically over the past 20-30 years: methods and forms of communication, forms of memory, virtual and augmented reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence. All this throws new technological, ethical, legal, psychological challenges that a person has never encountered before. In these new conditions, the very concept of well-being is changing.
“Well-being is associated with the realization of the potential inherent in a person, his abilities, talents, the feeling of being included in the social natural environment. It arises when there is stability, when the resource base is relatively stable, and it allows the implementation of long-term programs: from education to raising a child,” said Anna Plotnikova, head of the project, Professor of the Department of Fundamental and Applied Linguistics and Text Science of UrFU, Doctor of Philology.
Well-being within the framework of this project was defined by scientists as the provision of an individual with resources, which gives a person a sense of confidence in the present and the potential to maintain a stable state in the future.
The UrFU project is aimed at clarifying new aspects and parameters of human well-being in the modern digital world, finding ways to minimize risks and improve the quality of human life.
According to the UrFU press service, the project is divided into three tracks. The first one, “Language Markers and Communication Strategies for Well-Being”, is focused on the study of the sphere of communication as the most important component of the well-being of a modern person. Communication in instant messengers, blurring of personal boundaries and bullying in social networks, the need to verify the reliability of information sources on the Internet require a new understanding of modern communication. It is important to consider both the opportunities offered by new technologies and the risks associated with them.
The researchers said that in order to solve these problems, a large text corpus of media resources of the Ural region will be created to develop a map of well-being and methodological recommendations for the formation of a prosperous speech environment in the digital media space are proposed.
The second track of the project is “Human well-being in the field of reproductive donation and the institution of the family”. Ural Federal University scientists, together with the European Medical Center UMMC-Health LLC and the Ural Research Institute of OMM of the Russian Ministry of Health, are developing a methodology for the socio-psychological support of recipients and donors in reproduction. This direction will help to comprehend the challenges associated with new biomedical technologies, in particular, with the solution of the problem of infertility and, as a result, broader demographic problems.
“In our clinic, a significant percentage of cycles are performed using donor material, the socio-psychological diagnosis of an oocyte donor becomes especially relevant for all participants in the process: the clinic, recipients and donors themselves,” said Dmitry Mazurov, head of the ART department at UMMC-Health.
As part of a joint project, specialists from the ART (IVF) department of UMMC-Health and scientists from the Ural Humanitarian Institute of Ural Federal University are developing diagnostic methods for selecting oocyte donors, Mazurov added.
The track “Preservation of historical and cultural memory as a factor of well-being” is associated with new opportunities for preserving public memory that have emerged along with the development of new information technologies: digital copies of cultural and historical heritage objects, augmented reality technologies, digitized manuscripts and documents in high quality. This allows us to rethink the concept of cultural and historical memory in a new way, its forms, its scope, the potential for use in solving applied educational and recreational tasks.
Ensuring continuity in the life of human communities, maintaining identity, transferring social and cultural experience is an integral part of human well-being. The result of the implementation of this track will be the development of conceptual systems in the field of industrial tourism, the creative economy of services, branding, the formation of a comfortable living environment, and the positioning of the historical heritage of the industrial civilization of the Urals.
All three tracks within the project are combined methodologically: the research uses the methods of digital humanities – digital methods in the humanities. The project has a general concept: to study the impact on human well-being of modern technologies that change ideas about memory, transform the communicative space and require new ways to solve demographic and social problems.
The project “Human well-being in the context of digital transformation” is being implemented at the university as part of the strategic project of the Priority 2030 program.
