Visualizing Socio-techno-natural Processes: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

Contemporary models and systems of data visualization, implemented on the basis of information technology, individually cover social, technological and natural processes of the world development. Modern world is developing in the conditions of transformational transitional processes, when the artificial shell, the technosphere, created by the society becomes the leading life-support system instead of the biosphere. It is a full-fledged participant in the exchange processes between a globalizing technogenic society and transforming nature, which allows us to talk about forming socio-techno-natural laws of developing the world and life. There are no integrative visual models in the world that represent evolutionary changes in three systems simultaneously – society (and man), the technosphere and the technologically transformed biosphere, on the basis of which it is possible to predict the formation of a sustainable future for humanity in connection with the expansion of socio-technonatural processes. The generally recognized visualization methodology must be supplemented by the methodology of the philosophy of the world socio-technogenic development and the change in the evolution of life for a better visual representation and explanation of the transformation processes taking place in the changing world that is becoming post-biospheric. Interdisciplinary philosophical view allows capturing the world in the integrity of its diverse characteristics and at the same time forming a problem field for visualizing transformational processes. The fundamental role of the integration link belongs to information technology, which allows us to represent visually heterogeneous data with the aim of further developing models for the safe development of mankind in the technosphere.