Central Asia is gradually becoming part of the global process of transition to a new technological structure, which Klaus Schwab called the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (FIR). This process is most active in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which are the locomotives of the region’s economic growth and are investing heavily in digitalization and creating an ecosystem of startups and venture capital, gradually turning into exporters of digital services.

Meanwhile, when they talk about the digitalization of Central Asia, they most often consider its economic and technological aspects, while the value and closely related ethical aspects remain insufficiently developed at the academic level. However, as studies by Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter and Douglas North have shown, ideological, value and institutional paradigms directly influence the nature of economic and technological development. Moreover, the technologies themselves then influence the consolidation of a new value system and the transformation of previous value systems. For Central Asia, this is more relevant than ever, given that the region today faces competition between value systems.
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