Digital Economy, Information Society and Social Challenges in the Near Future

According to the digital economy, data in the digital form should become the key factor of production. In some studies, the digital economy is even interpreted as a new technological order and the fourth industrial revolution. At the same time, it is born and develops in the environment that is now commonly called the information society, being the basis for its life activity and experiencing, in its turn, the influence of the socio-cultural processes taking place in it. In this regard, we believe that if changes in the scale of the industrial revolution do occur, this will affect not only the economic situation, but also substantially rebuild the entire current social reality with its social institutions and regulatory complexes. This article shows at which levels such changes can occur. Initially, the existing and forecasted indicators of the digital economy in Russia and other countries are consistently considered in the article. Then the influence of digital technologies on the social stratification of society is shown. Finally, turning to modifications in the perception of information and the worldview of the personality in the digital era, the research is concluded by the demonstration of how the acting subject based on the reconstructed value systems makes decisions in the economic sphere that contribute to the further introduction of new technologies into the life styles of modern society.