Digital transformation of economy and society 1600-SZD-EiF-TrCyf

A new type of economy blooms before our eyes: the digital economy. It is conditioned by the acceleration and intensification of digitization processes that have been going on for over two decades, i.e. the growing use of digital technologies by enterprises, public institutions and non-governmental organizations, employees, consumers and citizens. The digital economy is based on the internet economy, but it differs significantly from it. New technologies - such as artificial intelligence, cloud, Internet of Things, autonomous robots or blockchain - accelerate the process of dataification, i.e. creating digital representations of subsequent areas of the real world, intensify networking and promote personalization. The specificity of the digital economy is defined by the intangible flow of data and information, unprecedented data integration, blurring the boundaries between goods, production factors and services, progressive automation of physical and mental work, taking place in the conditions of increasing flexibility and autonomy of machines and processes thanks to the use of artificial intelligence. Digitization processes - once limited to selected sectors, to certain institutions and companies, to certain departments of state administration, available only to certain units - are now becoming universal and global. As a result, the method of production and consumption, the organization of the market are changing under the influence of new business models, the nature of work and employment relations, the basic functions of the state and the manner of their implementation. Significant changes are also taking place at the global level. Society, economy and politics are undergoing a digital transformation.
We are flooded with sensational data and information about these radical changes from everywhere. However, there is still no conceptual framework that would allow to navigate this flood of news and build empirically anchored interpretations, analyzes and operational knowledge. Meanwhile, organizing knowledge and proposing patterns of interpretation of the changing reality is an important task of science, especially of social sciences. This is also how I see the aim of the course: to discuss the symptoms of changes under the influence of technology, referring to economic and sociological theories, using numerous empirical examples and drawing on basic and applied research that I carry out at DELab UW (Digital Economy Lab of the University of Warsaw).