Human Existence in the Networked World

Abstract

This paper explores the distinction between human consciousness and mechanical “thought” in the contemporary networked world. It argues that artificial intelligence, despite its capacity for complex data processing and language generation, lacks lived experience, temporality, mortality, and existential anxiety; elements that ground human meaning, moral responsibility, and freedom of will. Ethics is presented as a creative and experiential practice rooted in relationship, responsibility, and inner struggle, and therefore irreducible to algorithmic rules. The study further examines the digital condition as a new anthropological environment in which identity, memory, and judgment are increasingly shaped through technological mediation. The central challenge is not to reject technology, but to preserve human autonomy, critical reflection, and moral accountability within a reality where existence becomes progressively networked, technologically extended, and shaped by forms of digital posthumanism.