The digitalisation of our society requires a critical and ethical response from us. How are we to construct this response to our fast growing digital society. Scholars like Christian Fuchs suggests that we need humanist philosophy to address our data -intensive digital society. Contemporary digital society is profoundly exciting but not the best place to live in. It unfortunately, assists authoritarianism, racism, fascism and exclusionary nationalism. Authoritarianism and hatred is circulating on the wings of social media and the smart phone all over the internet. Truth as become an impression as we step into a post-truth society. Fake news has come to dominate our life and politics. Truth seems to have come to mean something with which we are emotionally comfortable and ideologically aligned. Algorithms and data analytics manage our attention and visibility and our interest to run Big Business and Big Politics.

We are faced with opacity about who creates the content of the social media . We cannot easily discern whether it is created by AI or humans. AI has come to influence the world of work, leisure , consumption, education , entertainment, healthcare , decision-making, news, transportation, manufacturing etc. The Big brother is watching us in the digital hive as well as in our living spaces. The eye of power has over taken the power of the eye through surveillance technologies . It has given power and control to Governments and Capitalists. We seem to be witnessing the demise of public sphere in our digital age. News and information has to be short , superficial and entertaining in order to reach a significant audience. The Public sphere is broken down into micro-publics , filter bubbles and echo-chambers so that humans are unable to talk to each other on vital issues. The public sphere is highly polarised and hate ridden. Humans see other humans through the prism of friends and enemies. We live a highly mediated life. This mediation of the social media platforms have made us alone and lonely although we are hooked to a digital crowd.

Digital technologies have come to shape our warfare. It has multiplied the destructive capabilities of military technologies. Digitalisation mediates our life. It mediates our inequalities and politics. Are we going enter an new stage of barbarity with this digitally mediated life ? Perhaps, we need an alternative vision of humanity . We need a new digital humanism . Maybe we need what we may call post-humanism that will care for humanity and the planet earth our common home. Capitalism produces an antagonism between human freedom and social justice. Enlightenment and French revolution brought us to the idea of human rights which forgot animal rights as well as our contract of being stewards of the earth. This meant that individuals in their freedom had rights to accumulate as much property and capital that they want. This new vision of freedom generated new forms of domination such as wage-labour and capitalist monopolies. Humanity, unfortunately, remain blind to maner in which this new freedom undermined Enlightenment’s promise of equality and solidarity as universal human rights.

In a very real way , capitalist society undermines social freedoms. This is why Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno argued that the dialectic of Enlightenment has a tendency of self-destruction which can reverse an enlightened civilisation into barbarism. Capitalism they say can take the dialectic of Enlightenment towards the abolition of reason. Capitalism can produce totalism that can produce and multiply Auschwitz which will lead to an mindless extermination of humanity as well as our planet earth. Capitalism, although wishes to advance human welfare, unfortunately, has destructive and fascist tendencies. Humanism has produced the path of capitalism. But capitalism itself destroys humanism in us. Hence, we need to revive humanism as we face digital capitalism. We need a new digital humanism. I like to look at it as digital Post-humanism. Such a digital Post-humanism might assist us to address the world of Big Data.

Here I disagree with Adorno and the Frankfurt School that says that we do not have to cancel the dialectic of Enlightenment. With the digital world and the growth of AI driven technology, the self-destructive tendencies of the dialectic of Enlightenment will grow exponentially and we see and will see the multiplication of barbarism of the enlightened and highly educated. I think a broader humanism that embraces the entire planet earth and all the living beings which we call Post-humanism may enable us to heal the wounds of a narrow humanism that produced capitalism which is metamorphizing into heartless digital capitalism in our times. This digital capitalism like capitalism itself is not merely an economic model, it is a political model. It shapes the distribution of wealth as well as power in our society. Hence , we can critically discern the (in)equality and (in)justice produced by it by simply promising and proclaiming the gospel of the goodness of digital life to humanity. This does not mean there are no benefits of digital life. Certainly , we have great benefits of digital revolution. But these digital benefits are non-democratic and the digital divide keeps the poor and the planet earth, our common home away from it.

The marriage of digital capitalism with neoliberalism has followed the principle of accumulation by dispossession. The Big Business spawned by Big Tech and accelerated by Big Data is also enhancing Big Politics and we can see the continuation of accumulation by dispossession that not just impacts the poor but also the planet earth. We have already stepped in the barbarism of the enlightened. Hence, the need of a new digital humanism is urgent. A new digital humanism is one that can enable us to use the power of data analytics to show how digitisation of our society is empowering inequality , social injustice , hate politics and kills our ability to respond . The new digital humanism in an age of Big Data will not just become anti-dote to capitalist use of data analytics to dispossess us but it can enable us to use the power of data analytics to demonstrate how humanity can co-exist in harmony and not in conflict with each other and its environment.

Data analytics has disruptive power. New digital humanism can use this not to produce antagonisms to promote digital capitalism and authoritarian politics but to show how trust and peace can be advanced in the world and open ways of saving our earth that is already reeling under the crisis of climate change. New digital humanism has the challenge to contest and dismantle the reigning friend and enemy ideology. It is only in this manner that we may overcome our mediated isolation. We are indeed alone in the digital world. This isolation has destroyed our sense of suffering humanity and we are to a large extend not able to compassionately respond to our suffering society. In this crisis it is Post-Humanism( new digital humanism) that might enable us to overcome the negative dialectic of enlightenment that is haunting us today.