Gogol’s Paradox: Cybernetics of Roads and Chronotope of Russia

Aim. By analyzing the contradictions visible today in Gogol’s description of Russian roads, to formulate the “Gogol’s paradox” and use it to analyze the meaning of roads in the Russian management system in the Gogol era and today, in a situation of threats and challenges associated with digitalization.

Methodology. The research is deeply interdisciplinary and is carried out using a set of general scientific and narrowly interdisciplinary approaches and methods, among which the central place is occupied by systemic, dialectical, semiotic and holistic methods, as well as the method of identifying and analyzing paradoxes.

Results. It is demonstrated that the contradiction in Gogol’s description of roads arises in our era due to a change in the meaning and cybernetic purpose of roads resulting from progressive digitalization. It is shown that the ongoing social-technogenic changes can be described in the optics of the concept of chronotope. It is noted that these changes were anticipated in the Russian culture, which proposed the Digital Earth and an alternative signless management architecture.

Research implications. The theoretical significance of the obtained result lies in the reconstruction of the place of the road in the creation of the national chronotope of Russia, in the establishment of the existence of signless information carriers and in the possibility of their practical use in management systems. The practical result is associated with the extreme urgency of Russia’s development in the situation of the struggle for the global dominance of a new network-centric management paradigm based on the Digital Earth, and in the revision of the national chronotope.

1. Baturin Yu. M. [Pre-images and prototypes of the noosphere: "Digital Earth" as a prototype]. In: Nauka i tekhnika: voprosy istorii i teorii: materialy XLIV Mezhdunarodnoj godichnoj nauchnoj konferencii Sankt-Peterburgskogo otdeleniya Rossijskogo nacional’nogo komiteta po istorii i filosofii nauki i tekhniki Rossijskoj akademii nauk, Sankt-Peterburg, 23–27 oktyabrya 2023 g. [Science and Technology: Questions of History and Theory: Proceedings of the XLIV International Annual Scientific Conference of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian National Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, October 23–27, 2023]. St. Petersburg, Skifiya-print Publ., 2023, pp. 24–37.

2. Bakhtin M. M. [Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel. Essays on Historical Poetry]. In: Literaturno-kriticheskie stat’I [Literary Critical Articles]. Moscow, Hudozhestvennaya literatura Publ., 1986, pp. 121–291.

3. Dergacheva E. A. [Socio-natural problems in modern globalistics]. In: Filosofiya i obshchestvo [Philosophy and Society], 2008, no. 3 (51), pp. 109–122.

4. Dergacheva E. A. [The concept of globalization in the context of socio-technonatural development]. In: Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seriya 27: Globalistika i geopolitika [Bulletin of Moscow University. Series 27: Globalistics and Geopolitics], 2015, no. 3–4, pp. 16–22.

5. Dergacheva E. A. [Digital Earth: from ideas to recreating a virtual copy of the planet]. In: Geokontekst [Geocontext], 2020, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 5–16. DOI: 10.30987/2686-8326-2020-5-16.

6. Dergacheva E. A., Kolesnik T. A. [Scientific and philosophical problems of education in the Digital Earth system]. In: Vestnik Yuzhno-Rossijskogo gosudarstvennogo tekhnicheskogo universiteta. Seriya: Social’no-ekonomicheskie nauki [Bulletin of the South-Russian State Technical University. Series: Social and Economic Sciences], 2022, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 233–246.

7. Eremchenko E. N. [Prehistory of the Digital Earth Concept]. In: Geokontekst [Geocontext], 2019, no. 7 (1), pp. 44–53.

8. Eremchenko E. [Digital Earth: The Geospatial Revolution and Its Worldview Implications]. In: Logos, 2023, vol. 33, no. 1 (152), pp. 221–241. DOI: 10.22394/0869-5377-2023-1-221-240

9. Eremchenko E. N. [Neoplatonism, Stated Clearly as the Sun, and the Digital Earth]. In: Vestnik Yuzhno-Rossijskogo gosudarstvennogo tekhnicheskogo universiteta (NPI). Seriya: Social’no-ekonomicheskie nauki [Bulletin of the South-Russian State Technical University (NPI). Series: Social and Economic Sciences], 2024, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 197–209. DOI: 10.17213/2075-2067-2024-2-197-209

10. Losev A. F., Taho-Godi A. A. [Neoplatonism, stated as clearly as the Sun]. In: Kontekst: literaturno-teoreticheskie issledovaniya [Context: literary and theoretical studies], 2003, pp. 269–288.

11. Nosov N. V. [Historiography of the Digital Earth project and stages of development]. In: Istoriya nauki i tekhniki: istochniki, pamyatniki, nasledie: chetvyortye chteniya po istoriografii i istochnikovedeniyu istorii nauki i tekhniki: k 300-letiyu Rossijskoj akademii nauk: materialy mezhdunarodnoj nauchnoj konferencii, Moskva, 7–8 noyabrya 2023 g. [History of science and technology: sources, monuments, heritage: fourth readings on historiography and source study of the history of science and technology: on the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences: materials of the international scientific conference, Moscow, November 7–8, 2023]. Ivanovo, PresSto Publ., 2023, pp. 213–215.

12. Pavlov I. P. [On the mind, on the Russian mind in particular]. In: Priroda [Nature], 1999, no. 8. Available at: http://vivovoco.ibmh.msk.su/VV/PAPERS/ECCE/MIND.HTM (accessed: 12.05.2024).

13. Preobrazhenskiy Yu. V. [The Chronotop in modern geographical discourse]. In: Vestniki Tverskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya: Geografiya i geoekologiya [Bulletin of Tver State University. Series: Geography and geoecology], 2017, no. 3, pp. 65–73

14. Silanyan K. G. Prostranstvennaya sreda kak sociokul’turnyj fenomen: dis. … kand. filos. nauk [Spatial environment as a socio-cultural phenomenon: Cand. Sci. in Philosophy]. Krasnodar, 2002. 162 p.

15. Bemong N., Borghart P., De Dobbeleer M., Demoen K., De Temmerman K., Bart Keunen B., eds. Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives. Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives: Proceedings of the workshop, 27–28 June 2008. New York, Academia Press, 2010. 213 p.

16. Bushell S., Butler J., Hay D., Hutcheon R., Butterworth A. Chronotopic Cartography: Mapping Literary Time-Space. In: Journal of Victorian Culture, 2021, vol. 26, iss. 2, pp. 310–325. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcab004

17. Annoni A., Nativi S., Çöltekin A., Desha C., Eremchenko E., Gevaert C., et al. Digital earth: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In: International Journal of Digital Earth, 2023, no. 16 (1), pp. 1022–1072. DOI: 10.1080/17538947.2023.2187467

18. De Longueville B., Annoni A., Schade S., Ostlaender N., Whitmore C. Digital Earth`s Nervous System for Crisis Events: Real-Time Sensor Web Enablement of Volunteered Geographic Information. In: International Journal of Digital Earth, 2010, no. 3 (3), pp. 242–259.

19. Endsley M. Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. In: Human Factors, 1995, no. 37 (1), pp. 32–64.

20. Faguet J.-P. Decentralization and governance. In: Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers, EOPP 027. London, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2011. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/37346 (acessed: 14.04.2024).

21. Gore A. The Digital Earth: Understanding our planet in the 21st Century. Al Gore speech at California Science Center, Los Angeles, California, on January 31, 1998. Available at: http://www.zhanpingliu.org/research/terrainvis/digitalearth.pdf (accessed: 14.04.2024).

22. Kaftandjiev Сh. N., Ukhova L. V. Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope: signs of time and space in advertising from the point of view of semiotics. In: Media Linguistics, 2018, no. 5 (4), pp. 494–520. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu22.2018.409

23. Kant I. Critique of Pure Reason / trans. N. K. Smith. London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 (2nd Edition). 735 p.

24. Komac B., Gašperič P. Cartographic time travel: Reflecting the past, defining the present, and challenging the future using old maps. In: Acta Geographica Slovenica, 2023, no. 63 (2), pp. 9–21. DOI: 10.3986/AGS.13292

25. Liu Z., Foresman T., van Genderen J., Wang L. Understanding Digital Earth // Guo H., Goodchild M. F., Annoni A., eds. Manual of Digital Earth. Singapore: Springer, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9915-3_1

26. Selye H. From Dream to Discovery. On Being a Scientist. London, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited, 1964. 418 p.

27. Solomonick A. The Modern Theory of Cognition. Cambridge, Scholars Publishing, 2021. 247 р.

28. Vaara E., Reff P. A. Strategy and chronotopes: a Bakhtinian perspective on the construction of strategy narratives. In: M@n@gement, 2013, no. 16, pp. 593–604. DOI: 10.3917/mana.165.0593

29. Zeyer A. Scientific Holism: A Synoptic (“Two-Eyed Seeing”) Approach to Science Transfer in Education for Sustainable Development, Tested with Pre-Service Teachers. In: Sustainability, 2024, no. 16, pp. 2279. DOI: 10.3390/su16062279