=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2744/paper44
|storemode=property
|title=Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation: Digital Challenges of Living Earth
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2744/paper44.pdf
|volume=Vol-2744
|authors=Elena Dergacheva and Eduard Demidenko
}}
==Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation: Digital Challenges of Living Earth==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2744/paper44.pdf
Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human
Transformation: Digital Challenges of Living Earth*
Elena Dergacheva1[0000-0003-4562-2914] and Eduard Demidenko1[0000-0002-2113-6025]
1 Bryansk State Technical University, Bryansk, Russia
eadergacheva2013@yandex.ru
Abstract. In the XXI century, the world of man and nature develops mainly in
socio-technogenic living conditions. Global technospherization of the planet
Earth is the most important cause of continuous socio-cultural, techno-medical
and biological changes in man. In technical, natural and human studies a human
is usually considered from the point of view of only one discipline. This narrow
approach leaves its incorrect mark when recreating the new image of a human in
the virtual environment of the digital image of the world. Digital Earth technolo-
gies establish a link between the spheres: social, biospheric, natural-inanimate
and artificial, created by society using a number of important sciences. It is nec-
essary to approach systematically the representation of the evolving human being
in the constantly updated digital space of the planet, to supplement the existing
developments of scientists with a scientific and philosophical understanding of
the interdisciplinary processes of socio-technogenic development of the bio-
sphere life. Scientific visualization of interrelated evolutionary changes in man
is of great interest for the Digital Earth project both from the point of view of
studying anthropogenesis, and from the point of view of developing promising
programs for preserving his biosphere body and natural health in a developing
socio-technogenic world.
Keywords: Human, Biosphere, Artificial and Natural world, Socio-techno-nat-
ural Processes, Virtual Reality, Change of Evolution of Life.
1 Introduction
Social and natural world is now changing dangerously due to the spontaneous introduc-
tion of achievements of scientific and technological revolution. The expectations of the
unilateral ruling economic and political elite of the strategic development of mankind
are associated with the prospects of obtaining gratuitous wealth and the introduction of
the digital revolution. Its technologies are aimed at system processing of the
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
* The publication of the conference proceedings was supported by the RFBR, grant No. 9-03-
20113.
2 E. Dergacheva, E. Demidenko
information accumulated by all mankind about the "biophysical objects" of the envi-
ronment in the virtual space, which will allow artificial recreating a complete image of
the real earth world in detail. The Digital Earth project, declared by Albert Gore at the
end of the twentieth century, as a key task of information technologies of the twenty
first century [1], aimed at creating a multi-dimensional information system as a plat-
form to support international cooperation in order to solve global and local problems of
the new world development [2]. The first achievements in implementing this project
were made by Google developers in 2005. The Digital Earth project was officially ap-
proved by the Russian Government in 2017 [3]. This project does not take into account
the more important and promising project - "Living planet", which no one takes, be-
cause it requires huge investments.
Subsequent paragraphs, however, are indented.
At the same time the precursor of discussing digital visualization of the planet should
be considered the following novels: "The Master and Margarita" by M. A. Bulgakov
(1928-1940) and "War and Peace" by L. N. Tolstoy (1869) [4]. They were the first to
consider "live" globes with fantastic for that period opportunities for studying terrestrial
objects in dynamics. These time-anticipating globes had the characteristics of an all-
scale, all-angle, and unsigned representation of the constituent elements. A foreign re-
searcher D. Jackson (2018) associates the first publications about the representation of
the Earth's globe in a new volume quality with the works of R. B. Fuller (1928) [5].
Research shows that the foresight of the Digital Earth in Russia began almost a century
and a half before the famous speech by A. Gore about the need to develop a qualita-
tively different system for presenting geospatial information (1998), which is recog-
nized in the international publications [6].
In 1995 professor E. S. Demidenko proposed the project "World Information Ency-
clopedia" of multimedia content, supported in the Declaration of the United Nations,
the International Academy of Informatization, the Administrations of Moscow region
and Dubna (Russia), providing regionally quality assessments of all objects and pro-
cesses of world development on the basis of certification systems for quality and ecol-
ogy. Its part is already being worked out in Kaliningrad region, and this may find ap-
plied in the development of the project under discussion [7].
In engineering sciences, the "live" globe of the Digital Earth is identified with a dy-
namic pulsating system of representing geoinformation data outside the scales of tradi-
tional maps. In contrast to the narrow technical interpretation the concept of "Living
Earth" developed by us in this and other papers, combines various phenomena of natu-
ral biological life, cultivated by millions of years of biosphere evolution, including man
himself as a biosocial organism. This paper deals with filling the virtual space of a
digital planet with more than just geoinformation data. This refers to an extended model
of recreating the biosphere in virtual space in relation to social, natural and technolog-
ical processes affecting the modern evolutionary development. And man is an integral
element of these processes, whose visualization in the dynamic artificial environment
of a virtual planet seems necessary. This paper continues the topic of visualization of
evolutionary socio-technogenic processes, raised in an earlier work by one of the au-
thors of the paper [8]. After all, if there are people in the virtual "Voland's globe" from
Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" [9, p. 268], then in order to reproduce a
Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation… 3
real copy of the Earth in digital space, it is necessary to present the historical perspective
of the evolutionary changes that occur to man. Visualization of global socio-techno-
genic changes in man is a digital challenge to information technologies to recreate in
detail the processes of the Living planet, that is the biosphere system of life in the unity
of society, man and nature. To implement this idea in the digital space, an interdisci-
plinary symbiosis of information technologies with natural and social sciences is nec-
essary. It is quite possible that we are talking about the construction of a «time ma-
chine», since the Digital Earth project will allow us to model retrospective and prospec-
tive processes in visual images.
The project implemented by various international research groups involves complex
mapping of the Earth's surface, including social and cultural objects [2]. Digital Earth
is a "visual phenomenon", that is, a geo-information system built on multidimensional
high-quality visual images. In contrast to the existing maps, Digital Earth (or neogeog-
raphy in terms of Russian researchers [10]) provides an interactive, out-of-scale, all-
angle view of heterogeneous objects, including adjustments to the viewing distances of
images [11].
As the developers of the Digital Earth project from different countries hope, this
virtual environment should reflect the image of the real world, both social and natural
[12]. Visualization of the planet in the virtual space also implies a systematic represen-
tation of man as a representative of not only terrestrial, but also digital world. In the
conditions of socio-technogenic development of life and world, man is subjected to
many-sided socio-cultural, technological and natural-biological transformations [13,
14, 15, 16], this makes it necessary to take them into account when reproducing his
unfavorably changing image in an increasing artificial environment.
2 Methodology
In our research, we initially rely on a systematic socio-natural approach, discovered by V.I.
Vernadsky. Biosphere over the entire history of life has not only developed itself, but has
also transformed the entire surface of the planet, creating man. Now society is even more
transforming not only the world, but the biosphere itself. V.I. Vernadsky, relying on the
centuries-old experience of farmers in cultivating plants and domesticating animals,
strongly believes that associated humanity will continue to form a higher level of biosphere,
which corresponded to his understanding of noosphere [17, p.175]. But the bourgeois or-
ganism developing on the scientific and technological basis of private property affects the
biosphere nature (including man) not so much by changing it positively, as by negatively
transforming and destroying it. Visualization of changes in biosphere and man is important
for the purposes of retrospective and prospective analysis of the Earth state.
Nowadays philosophers and scientists rely more and more on the use of interdisciplinary
research to determine the fundamental laws of the world's development. In our approach to
interdisciplinary research of the socio-technogenic development of the world and the change
in the evolution of life, philosophy plays the leading role. Its multidisciplinary approach is
based on the essence of philosophy, which covers not only the scientific side of life, but also a
significant area of non-scientific knowledge, social experience of mankind, socio-cultural
4 E. Dergacheva, E. Demidenko
values developed by it, especially the principles of morality [18]. Together, these elements
make up an important tool of post-non-classical philosophy and science, and allow to trace
how technogenic life is developing now and how it will change humanity in the future [19].
This also allows us to understand the phenomenon of the Digital Earth being formed in a mul-
tidimensional way. A virtual image of it is created on the basis of the tools of technical sciences
[10, 11, 20, 21], but the existing image of a deadly transforming living planet is overlooked.
3 Results and Discussion
Digital Earth is a kind of virtual image of a globe of multi-contour socio-economic,
ecogeographic and other data, combined with appropriate algorithms for their analysis
and models. The mechanism of constantly updated data in a high-performance compu-
ting environment allows to see the state of the Earth's systems (atmosphere, hydro-
sphere, lithosphere) in their historical dynamics, monitor changes, and build a probable
forecast for the future. This project is of an interdisciplinary nature, since, on the one
hand, it is filled with data from observations of various sciences and connected by a
network of digital libraries. On the other hand, eventually system analytics represented
by visual models is more easily perceived by scientists from different research fields.
Data visualization technologies provide a visual representation of social and natural
processes taking place in the world. This approach formally allows to apply the infor-
mation obtained in the natural, social and technical sciences jointly, make science-
based decisions, and in the future – to strengthen control over the state of subsystems
of Earth's biosphere. All this confirms the fact that the Digital Earth establishes a con-
nection between the worlds: social, biospheric, naturally inanimate and artificial, cre-
ated by society using a number of important sciences, but, in our opinion, far from
scientific, since it ignores the foundation of scientific knowledge i.e. philosophy, re-
ducing it to a worldview discipline.
In the guide to Digital Earth published at the end of 2019, which fully reflects the
research developments related to this topic, man is presented in the aspect of studying
social and behavioral activity in the virtual space. According to a number of research-
ers, it is necessary to focus on this aspect of man’s life, which is associated with the
activities and interests of many users in social networks, when building an image of
man in the digital space. Visualization of behavioral models of network users (leaving
"digital traces") will allow not only to build marketing strategies and provide economic
justification for planned activities in the virtual environment, but also to predict and
even prevent social disasters, to understand the relationship between the environment
and individual’s behavior. After all, man at his pages in social networks shares feelings
and emotions about events from the real world in an iconic form [22]. Therefore, the
study of psychological aspects and the construction of man’s changing socio-cultural
image that corresponds to them is quite justified from the point of view of the perspec-
tive safe development of a social, technical and biospheric society, in which the bio-
sphere will exist as a self-developing system.
As a result of the spontaneous socio-technogenic development of the world, homo
sapiens himself changes in many ways spontaneously as a biosocial being, whose life
Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation… 5
activity is mainly connected with the growing techno-urban environment of life. Natu-
ral man, nurtured by millions of years of biosphere evolution, undergoes transfor-
mations in the technosphere environment of life in three spheres: socio-cultural, natu-
ral-biological and artificial-technogenic. We believe that visualization of interrelated
evolutionary social, technical and natural changes in the human is of great interest for
the Digital Earth project, both from the point of view of studying anthropogenesis for
scientific and educational purposes, and from the point of view of developing promising
programs for preserving his biosphere body and natural health in a dynamically devel-
oping socio-technogenic world.
In accordance with the historical stages of socio-technogenic formation of the world,
we distinguish two epochs in the existence of mankind: 1) the epoch of biospheric hu-
manity, which combines social systems: a) gathering, b) agriculture and crafts; 2) the
epoch of post-biosphere (technogenically developing) humanity, including c) industrial-
technogenic, d) post-industrial-technogenic (information-technogenic) society. The con-
cept of D. Bell considers three societies on the basis of changes in the technical and
technological way of production of social life: agrarian, industrial and post-industrial
(informational). This division gives a different understanding of societies, in which only
social laws are taken into account, and changing natural processes due to socio-techno-
genic development are left out of consideration. We extend understanding of the socie-
ties proposed by D. Bell, and add their characteristics with the consideration of socio-
technical and natural evolutionary changes. On this basis, we consider societies as in-
dustrial - and post-industrial-technogenic (Fig.1).
Biospheric humanity
Society of gathering Society of agriculture and crafts
Post-biosphere humanity
Industrial-technogenic society Post-industrial-technogenic, or infor-
mation-technogenic society
Fig. 1. Classification of humanity types depending on the historical stage of socio-technogenic
development of the world.
We should also note that D. Bell, being a Marxist, ignored Marx's research on the
class division of social systems. This is especially true for bourgeois and socialist
6 E. Dergacheva, E. Demidenko
industrial and technogenic development, without which we cannot combine the projects
of Digital and Living Earth.
The global anthropogenesis is associated with the appearance and development of
primitive people. First there appeared homo sapiens -Neanderthal man (about 400 thou-
sand years ago), then - Cro-Magnon man (about 200 thousand years ago), and 50-60
thousand years ago there appeared a modern man based on Cro-Magnon with traces of
Neanderthal genes. For thousands of years, the evolution of society has been in organic
unity with nature. Its life activity, corresponding to the appropriating type of economy,
completely fit into the chain of the biotic cycle of substances. During that period, evolu-
tionary changes in man were of biospheric and biological nature: there was a formation
of races and the division into blood groups. But the resources of cropping and gathering
were exhausted, so humanity was forced to switch to agriculture (as the first type of
producing economy) and the use of natural, biospheric (i.e., agricultural and breeding)
technologies. Neolithic revolution (approximately 10 thousand years ago) was the end
of the era of human existence as an ordinary animal species, since it marked the transition
from an appropriating to a producing economy (agriculture and craft) with a noticeable
formation of the technosphere and technogenic type of life development. Society began
to change the biogeochemical cycles of nature purposefully and to create an artificial
cycle of substances using manual technologies, although just on small territories at that
period. But these changes have not yet led to the emergence of a technogenic society and
to significant technogenic transformations in biosphere and man. All these and many
other facts give reason to believe that the societies of gathering and farming should be
attributed to the epoch of existing biospheric humanity (i.e., natural, evolutionarily nur-
tured by nature).
A society consisting of people is a subsystem of biosphere that has been evolving
over many millennia in the biosphere system of life. About three centuries ago, during
the transition to industrial-technogenic development, the dominant role in the relation-
ship "society-nature" began to shift to a technogenic society, which significantly recon-
structed the natural environment of life, creating an artificial one.
The industrial revolution (XVIII century) created conditions for a radical transition
of society to the mass socio-technogenic development of biosphere and machine-tech-
nical subordination of nature to the technogenic society in the XIX – XXI centuries,
which led to the mass destruction of biosphere. For example, in 1920-1970s, the dis-
charge of humus from the soil covering into rivers, seas and the ocean increased from
3 billion tons to 24 billion tons [23]. Technogenically developing society based on a
variety of industrial nano-, bio-, information, cognitive technologies creates an artificial
object, tool, material and electromagnetic environment of life, that is technosphere,
technogenically transforms biosphere, its natural and biological processes and organ-
isms. In the third decade of the XXI century n the urban technosphere about 4 billion
people will live, that is more than half of the world's population, whereas in 1800 there
were only about 50 million people [24]. A rational technosphere system of life is being
formed, into which society gradually translates all the processes of biotechnological
reproduction of life. Transitional "rational" forms of life between the natural and artifi-
cial worlds are a variety of biotechnological, cloned organisms, including man who is
technogenically changing as well.
Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation… 7
There is integrated interdependence of the whole socio-economic, technosphere and
biosphere development, which eventually results in expansion of processes of the world
social and technological development, technogenic transformation of the biogeochem-
ical cycles of substances, and more generally – in changing the direction of the land
surface evolution – from biosphere to post-biosphere, mostly artificial [13]. These and
other questions of post-biosphere biotechnological development of life in the urban
technosphere and the formation of post-biosphere humanity attract a lot of attention of
scientists and researchers of the Russian Interdisciplinary Scientific-philosophical
School which deals with social and technological development of the world, social and
technological processes and changes of life evolution, working at Bryansk State Tech-
nical University since 2002 [18]. If we try to analyze the transition of life from bio-
sphere into urban technosphere, then we will get the following facts: in 1860 techno-
sphere contained 5% of the world's animals, including humans, in 1940 – 10%, in 1980-
20%, and now-40%, which clearly indicates the formation of post-biosphere life on
Earth's land [13] (Fig.2).
Intensification of processes in social, technological and natural development of the
world indicates that the Digital Earth project is a valuable and logical reflection of the
global technologization of all life processes in biosphere, and then it can also serve as
a kind of big data library of created technosphere. In the created technosphere, two
components should be distinguished – the post-biosphere world (physically tangible,
technospheric) and the off-biosphere world (virtual, supplemented by the imagination
of people, symbolic, described by technical means of information technologies). Virtual
tools (information technologies) can be considered as info-technosphere [25], which
ensures the functioning of technosphere development of life.
Global technogenic community of the planet
Technogenic society systems
Artificial environment – technosphere
Technogenically transformed biosphere
Social and technonatural processes in the world
Social and technological development of the world
Post-biosphere biotechnological development of life (in the urban technosphere)
Fig. 2. Global technogenic community of the planet which leads to the degradation of biosphere
components.
To maintain the functionality of non-material, virtual space, a significantly increas-
ing amount of electricity is consumed in the biophysical world. Technosphere,
8 E. Dergacheva, E. Demidenko
connecting with a technogenically developing society and technogenically transformed
regions of biosphere, forms a semi-artificial (i.e., transitional to artificial) social, tech-
nical and natural system of life. Technogenic transformations happening to man include
both changes in his social qualities in life, and purposeful changes of the body by social,
technical and medical interventions, as well as the impact on the body with synthetic
chemicals produced by society, located in the atmosphere of cities and food, weakening
of his physical health as a result of leaving the sphere of natural selection and as a result
of a sedentary lifestyle (Fig. 3).
Social and technogenic transformation of man
Social and cultural changes (changes in man’s social qualities)
Social, technical and medical changes (purposeful changes of the body)
Social, technical and biological changes (socio- and techno-impact)
Dangerous imaginations of transhumanists
Social and natural changes (increase of mutagenesis and genetic inad-
equacy due to reduce of natural selection)
Fig. 3. Global social and technogenic transformations of man.
In the agricultural society, the main socio-natural qualities of man were: workahol-
ism, conciliarity, collectivist morality with primary spirituality, kindness, honesty,
trust, compassion, tolerance, empathy, forgiveness, faith in the supernatural and pow-
erful things, justice, love, protection of wildlife, limited ideas about the world and
knowledge of life, low average life expectancy, high mortality of children, extreme
poverty of the absolute majority of the world's peoples, naturally defined health and its
strengthening by sports and medicine. The highest meaning of life was love for close
people and divine symbols. Creative achievements in activities and agricultural culture
were the following: cultivation of higher types of plants, domestication of animals, cre-
ation of unique religious buildings and cultural monuments, folk festivals and useful
leisure activities (Fig. 4).
Over the millennia, the average life expectancy has changed as the main indicator of
the level of socio-historical development and the state of natural and biological viability
of man (Table 1). So, if in Russia the average life expectancy in 1897 was 32 years, in
Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation… 9
1990 in the USSR-70 years, in 2020 -71 years [24]. According to WHO, life expectancy
in the world is 67.2 years (65.0 for men and 69.5 for women) according to the UN, in
Japan – 84 years, in socialist Cuba – 79 years, in the United States – 78.5 years.
World agricultural productive forces in biosphere society (social
power, %)
Muscular force of people – 30 %
Physical energy of domestic animals – 68 %
Manual technical energy – 2 %
Peasant Russian of the ХIХ century:
Dependence of people’s life from biosphere
mortality of children under 18 – 60%
mortality of children under 5 – 43 %
Average life expectancy – 32 years
Fig. 4. Total social energy and life expectancy of biosphere humanity.
The main socio-natural qualities of man and people's relations in a technogenic so-
cialist society (the USSR and China) in the conditions of socio-collective orientation of
life, socio-natural and humanely developing consciousness (mind) was the predomi-
nance of national socio-natural values, such as: workaholism, conciliarity, socialist mo-
rality and spirituality, kindness, honesty, trust, forgiveness, empathy, compassion, tol-
erance, faith in the supernatural and especially the powerful things, justice, a high level
of culture, education and health of people, love and collective protection of nature, the
average level of ideas about the world, knowledge about life, average life expectancy,
low mortality of children, above average living standards of the entire population (Fig.
5), lack of exploitation, socially defined health on the basis of free medicine and sports,
predominance of public funds and social justice, the highest meaning of life — love to
the closest, to work, creating values.
10 E. Dergacheva, E. Demidenko
Table 1. Retrospective and prospective analysis of changes in human life expectancy
(according to WHO) [24].
Type of society/ The average life
regions, countries / Chronological Framework expectancy of man,
gender years
Gathering 400 thousand years – 10 thousand years ago 15
Early agricultural soci- 10 thousand years ago
ety – New chronology 15-20
Agricultural society of
middle ages Up to the year 1400 20
The beginning of indus-
trialization:
Europe 1600–1850 years from 25 to 41
India 1897 22,6
Russia 1897 32
Industrial society
at the beginning of sci-
entific and
technical revolution
(world as a whole) 1950 50
Developed
industrial society (world
as a whole) 1990
2000 63
66
Highly industrial society
world as
a whole forecast 67,2
men 65
women 69,5
Japan 84,2
France 82,9
Cuba 79
USA 78,5
Russia 71
Creative achievements in collective activity and socialist culture of the USSR and
China were creative development of culture as opposed to the bourgeois, high level of
education of the population and higher education, high level of mastering the specialty,
creative nature of labor, cultivation of higher types of plants, domestication of animals,
creation of unique religious buildings and many cultural monuments, folk holidays and
useful leisure activities. At the same time, this socio-historical stage is characterized by
an excessive level of technogenic-industrial development: artificial forms of human life,
urbanization and forming technosphere for people and animals, negative technological
Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation… 11
effects on biosphere life in cities and nature, destruction of soil cover as the basis of bio-
sphere life, forming promising biotechnological production to replace biosphere forms of
production and human life. Since the entire economy of a technogenic society is moti-
vated by the rationality of effective income generation, then man develops qualities re-
lated to the search for individual benefits, high professionalism, and education.
World scientific and technical productive forces in a technogenic society
(social energy, %)
Muscular force of people – less than 1 % %
Physical energy of domestic animals – less than 1 %
Machine technical energy – 98 %
Industrial USSR in 1990: average life expectancy – 70 years
Bourgeois industrial Russia in 2020: average life expectancy – 71 years
Fig. 5. Total social energy and life expectancy of technogenic mankind.
During global technospherization, man develops new, technogenic qualities (in partic-
ular, new norms of communication, habits, ideas about everyday life, having leisure, life-
style, etc.) that replace natural ones. They are associated with scientific medical technol-
ogies for improving human nature and endowing the body with new properties, maintain-
ing weakened health. On the other hand, the uncontrolled expansion of technomaterials
in the biosphere adversely affects the health of an individual, which leads to the growth
of allergic, oncological and other diseases of civilization [13]. So, three or four decades
ago, according to WHO data, allergies were extremely rare. By the beginning of the XXI
century in the conditions of intensive technogenic development the situation has changed:
within a decade and a half since the beginning of registration of this disease (since the
1980s) in official sources, the number of allergic diseases in the world has doubled (in
particular, those with bronchial asthma) and, as a result, weakening of the immune system
[24]. All this indicates that technologies are becoming a factor that determines the change
of social and biological processes in man, since they fix the irreversibility of trends and
contain prerequisites for changing the direction of his evolution.
Strengthening of the era of the fourth industrial revolution proclaimed by the techno-
cratic elite of the world [26] focuses the attention of researchers on the full technicalization
of the human being, which is reflected in various projects of medical technologies to
12 E. Dergacheva, E. Demidenko
improve the quality of people’s life, and in dangerous imagination of transhumanists to
create and visualize an artificial analog of man [16]. But man represented as "the sum of
technologies" (according to the apt phrase of the academician of the Russian Academy of
Sciences V. A. Lectorskiy) [27, p. 86], devoid of feelings and emotions, controlled by both
external and internal technical systems, already belongs to the post-human branch of evo-
lution.
4 Conclusion
The main task of modern society is to preserve the natural man in the conditions of
spontaneously increasing socio-technogenic development of the world, to preserve bi-
osphere necessary for his life. Complementing the thoughts of Yu.N. Golubchikov
about threats to biosphere development, we can say that the development of strategies
for the survival of natural humanity is becoming the most important "new geoconcept
of geography" [28], implemented in the project Digital Earth.
Socio-technogenic transformations, considered in the paper, are largely spontane-
ous. It is necessary to include them into the content of the virtual environment of the
Digital Earth. A systematic representation of the evolutionarily changing appearance of
a human being in an artificial environment is important from the point of view of de-
veloping all promising programs for preserving his biosphere body and natural health
in a highly transforming and perversely developing socio-technogenic world. Effective
decision - making to maintain human viability depends directly on the quality of per-
cepting the context in which these decisions are made. The context in this case is the
geospatial space of the Digital Earth.
The quality of virtual geospatial management is determined by the quality of modeling
social, technogenic and natural processes in it. Until recently, geospatial analysis was
conducted primarily on the basis of data presented in traditional maps and geo-infor-
mation systems. Information technologies of the Digital Earth represent a more perfect
tool, because they avoid static images of the world and allow to see the world as it is in
reality. With the help of scientific visualization tools, we are able to see "Living Earth
"(biosphere) in a natural, alive way without the use of "dead" conventions (signs, models,
categories) and plan programs for the safe socio-technogenic development of the world
and man. The living world will be integrated into the decision-making procedure for man-
aging socio–technogenic changes due to the immanent quality of virtual space - the natu-
ral character of reproducing processes modeled using the Digital Earth.
The modern world is only taking the first steps in scientific visualization of the hu-
man image in the Digital Earth [22]. Large-scale tasks for information technologies to
represent the real image of the biosphere in an artificial environment have to be solved
yet. These tasks can be implemented only if the entire interdisciplinary potential of
natural, social, and technical sciences is involved.
Visualizing Global Socio-Technogenic Human Transformation… 13
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