What Does the Digital World Really Mean in 2025?

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2025 is a critical year for technology and change. While digital transformation brings convenience, we must also be wary of security risks. AI is reshaping the boundaries of life, green transformation is protecting the planet, and inclusive societies are inspiring innovation. Everyone is a participant in the future; actively embrace change and work together to create a new era of hope.

The world we live in is entering a new dimension—the digital world. Since a mutation in the human FOX P2 gene, endowing us with the ability to express logically, humans have acquired the ability to weave stories, gradually constructing a world of profound meaning. This world of meaning is increasingly enriched by numerous fictional systems of meaning, including language, writing, poetry, religion, culture, trade, and law. As it evolves from local competition to globalization, despite the conflicts that have occurred along the way, people's understanding of these conflicts is also deepening.

The Three Dimensions of the Human World
Today, with the rapid development of the internet, new dimensions of human society are continuously expanding, and a new digital world is quietly taking shape. Thus, human society presents a pattern of three coexisting worlds: the physical world, the world of meaning, and the digital world. Throughout the brief span of human history, the physical world has remained unshaken, its laws irreversible and unchangeable. Human biology is shaped by these laws, profoundly influencing all our activities.
The world of meaning, however, a derivative of the physical world we discover and understand, has continuously evolved, forming a complex and ever-changing system of meaning. Like a surging river, it appears fragile on the surface, yet is in reality remarkably resilient.
With the sudden arrival of the digital world, we may have anticipated a future of beauty, regulation, and order, fueled by its convenience. However, judging by the development of the world of meaning, it remains an uncultivated wilderness, its rules unestablished and its structure unclear.
◇ The History and Current State of the World of Meaning
The world of meaning began with simple language and writing, gradually evolving into complex concepts such as totems, beliefs, bloodlines, castes, and tribes. It is a process of continuous growth and integration, encompassing multiple dimensions, including culture, nation, religion, trade, and law.
◇ The Potential and Challenges of the Digital World
In comparison, the human digital world is still in its infancy. What it currently enables is only a partial representation of the content and information channels of the world of meaning. The underlying architecture, regulatory framework, and global norms of the digital world are still under construction. This means that while the digital world can achieve global information synchronization, it still lacks the necessary rules and systems for global collaboration.
So, is it possible for the physical world, the world of meaning, and the digital world to develop asynchronously? If they must synchronize, is the digital world a reshaping of the real world, or merely a projection and diffraction of the physical and meaning worlds in digital space?
◇ Future Outlook and Personal Choices
For countries, the digital world represents a new competitive landscape and an opportunity for strategic reconstruction.
For businesses, businesses that fail to digitize risk being eliminated by the market.
For individuals, actively choosing to be a "dividend sharer" rather than a "cost bearer" of digital transformation is far more valuable than passive acceptance.
Let's examine the rise of the digital world today through the lens of humanity's emergence from the East African Rift Valley 100,000 years ago. Facing similarly unknown challenges, our understanding of the future may not be any better than that of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Before the complex digital calculations begin, chaos and opportunity intertwine, and the outcome remains to be seen. Can existing ethics, culture, customs, and beliefs adapt to the demands of digital survival? Or will new digital totems, beliefs, bloodlines, hierarchies, and tribal concepts reappear in the digital world, or will some be retained while others disappear in the process of change? Anything is possible, and everything is quietly unfolding…

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