A Word from the Subject Editors

Abstract

The latest monographic volume of Studia de Cultura is dedicated to the issue of cyberculture in the third decade of the twenty-first century. The analyses presented herein focus less on the “archaeology” or “history” of the phenomenon itself and more on its contemporary manifestations, critical insights, research strategies, institutional practices, and legal regulations. The trajectories of cybercultural development up to its current form are distinctly revealed through cultural products, communicative and artistic practices in VR, AR, and MR spaces, the aesthetics and logic of digital knowledge repositories, the info-aesthetics of technological and cultural interfaces, as well as the applications of cyberpsychological knowledge, information technologies, and digital tools in the design of user experience solutions, including those employing artificial intelligence (AI) or the Internet of Things (IoT).

It is therefore undeniable that digital technology is becoming increasingly proximate to the average person, also in a literal sense—that is, through the material embodiment of its solutions, as exemplified by human-computer interfaces and other forms of medical or artistic human cyborgization. Technology is no longer merely an extension of human senses and cognitive processes, as Marshall McLuhan suggested in the mid-twentieth century. Instead, it fundamentally shapes our identity, autonomy, personality, social communication, interpersonal interactions, the nature of work, leisure practices, and the functioning of the human organism on biological, physiological, and psychological levels. Next-generation digital technologies also critically determine the functioning of the so-called social body, its subjects, objects, and infrastructure, which attracts the attention of lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

The relationships between humans and Cyberculture 3.0 thus necessitate new ontological questions (concerning human nature), ethical questions (regarding the limits of responsibility), and legal questions (about the need to adapt existing legislation to new cultural challenges). Some of these issues are explored within cultural and philosophical studies under trans- and posthumanist frameworks, though many still require further research and the continuous search for increasingly adequate solutions.

Cyberculture 3.0 emerges—including in light of the articles and essays presented in this volume—as a complex, in statu nascendi phenomenon that requires ongoing inter- and transdisciplinary inquiry, rigorous reflection, methodological attentiveness, and collaboration among diverse practitioners and theorists of media, as well as researchers, producers, and consumers of media culture. Among the practitioners closely associated with cyberculture are specialists in digital technologies, digital artists, educators in cyberculture and next-generation digital competencies, online and offline community facilitators, and legal experts in new media.

The boundaries between theory and practice within Cyberculture 3.0 are often extremely difficult to delineate. Cybercultural practices tend to generate new forms of meta-knowledge, while researchers affiliated with various disciplines (e.g., new media art, media cultural studies, law, media pedagogy, and cyberpsychology) often function simultaneously as practitioners or even producers of cyberculture and, as social actors, as subjects of its multifaceted effects.

Cyberculture 3.0, associated with new paradigms of cultural research, practical strategies of cultural object construction, remixing and cultural recycling, as well as dystopian intersections of science, technology, and next-generation digital media art, resists static, monodisciplinary approaches and conventional research frameworks. This postmodern, rhizomatic, transdisciplinary nature is reflected—at least to some extent—in the scholarly texts contained in this volume. It opens with reflections on media education and the development of new digital competencies in response to civilizational challenges such as hybrid threats, post-truth, and the proliferation of fake news in media and public spaces. Effective implementation of these initiatives requires not only educational specialists but also new institutional arrangements and tools designed to support such efforts.

These topics are addressed in the following contributions: Agnieszka Ogonowska’s From Intrigue and Conspiracy to Hybrid Threats: New Competencies and Media Education in Cyberculture 3.0; Daniel Sołtysiak’s Media Education Laboratories in Poland; and Przemysław Chmielecki’s University in the Face of AI: An Introduction to the Analysis. In the context of new challenges posed by Cyberculture 3.0, questions about human nature are examined in Mariusz Hubert Kupniewski’s Robo Sapiens: New Alien or the Next Step in Human Evolution?. Magdalena Sawczuk explores institutional and communicative transformations in museums and social media in Viral Challenges as a New Form of Museums’ Activity in Social Media.

Cyberculture in the digital space is accompanied by law, which seeks to regulate the inherent complexity and indeterminacy of concepts within its scope. This often encompasses a broad set of “cyber-” phenomena that resist easy definition, structuring, and semiotic analysis, while simultaneously necessitating the creation of specialized terminology that carries normative force within legal frameworks. Another limiting factor for the “legal framing” of cyberculture, beyond its intrinsic complexity, is the pan-European commitment to open data and the reduction of legal restrictions on the use of public sector information. Contemporary cultural law emphasizes enabling interaction and collaboration, reflecting social behaviors in which individuals share not only emotions or life experiences but also work outputs, including creative labor.

Technological advances have enabled collaboration and the exchange of information and data. Ensuring access to cultural assets through open data principles and the reuse of public sector information aligns with constitutional guarantees of equal access to cultural goods, with regulatory frameworks serving as a crucial reinforcement. The open data movement originates primarily from the concept of open government, itself linked to free and open movements such as free culture and open-source software. It also underpins the expansion of copyleft as an alternative to copyright.

The development of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and the necessary “training data” for its advancement, has foregrounded the importance of Text and Data Mining (TDM) in scholarly literature. TDM encompasses various methods that enable electronic analysis of large text and data corpora to identify new patterns, operational principles, statistical regularities, or correlations. The European Parliament and Council Directive (EU) 2019/790 of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (DSM), amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC, recognizes that “text and data mining [...] in relation to facts or data not subject to copyright does not require authorization under copyright law.” However, clarification is required regarding legitimate use when copyrighted works are involved. In particular, AI-related needs highlight the importance of resolving potential conflicts over authorial monopolies, for example regarding the reproduction and duplication of works using digital techniques. Attention must also be paid to the scope of the DSM exception granted to cultural heritage institutions such as libraries, museums, and archives. The Directive facilitates licensing to broaden access to content by introducing a system that allows cultural heritage institutions to digitize and disseminate works—including online and across EU borders—deemed unavailable commercially and held in their collections.

Although the Directive does not comprehensively regulate copyright in the Digital Single Market, it addresses several critical and debated issues, particularly in the cultural sphere, including related rights for press publishers and new liability rules for digital platforms hosting user-uploaded content. These topics are examined in this volume by Marlenna Sakowska-Baryła (Open Data and the Reuse of Public Sector Information: Modern Tools for Ensuring Constitutional Equality of Access to Cultural Goods), Adam Pązik (The Concept of an Information Society Service Provider in Light of Directive (EU) 2019/790), and Aleksandra Bagieńska-Masiota (Permitted Use for Text and Data Mining in Light of Directive (EU) 2019/790).

Jędrzej Skrzypczak’s article, Should the Functioning of Social Media Platforms Be Legally Regulated?, analyzes the legal dimensions of social media development, regulatory conditions, the notion of “demassified” communication, and the blurring of boundaries between producers/transmitters and consumers/audiences. The volume concludes with Marcin Mazgaj’s Virtual General Meetings in Joint-Stock Companies, addressing the electronic transformation of legal procedures in corporate law.

We sincerely invite readers to engage with these contributions. We hope that the articles collected in this monographic volume will contribute to the further development of interdisciplinary knowledge and research in contemporary cyberculture.

/Agnieszka Ogonowska, Bogdan Fischer/