The article considers the problem of forming specific models of the digital economy. The authors aim to carry out a systematic analysis of current trends in the modern economy in their comparison with the previous contexts of the development of the socioeconomic thought and cultural features of modern society. The method of critical analysis allows rethinking the stable ideas that have developed in science and identifying the uniqueness of the digital economy. The authors examine the concepts of the classical economic theory, economic rationality and irrationality, behavioral economics, gift economy, cultural industry, consciousness industry, information and aesthetic production. They conclude that the economic and social studies of recent decades highlight irrational motives of the behavior of participants in the economic system, which contradicts the classical economic theory. The digital economy is actively taking up new trends, creating conditions for the transformation of traditional sectors of the economy and the emergence of new business models. We have witnessed how information and knowledge have become the strategic resources of the modern economic system as a result of which we can observe a narrowing of material production and a simultaneous rapid growing of the "information industry". Despite all the criticism of technological mediation, the digital approach allows addressing the mental and emotional life of a person through new economic resources and categories such as information products, intellectual resources, symbolic good and utility, reputation capital, etc. It is quite obvious that the assertion of the priority of intangible assets in the market encourages not only the use of Internet information platforms, but also an unconventional view of the digital economy. This view is based on the identification of the processes of mental measurement of information as an object of the economy; these processes no longer fit into traditional models and radically change the ideas of wealth, profit, efficiency and other economic concepts. The scale of such changes suggests a change in the economic paradigm, for which a creative approach aimed at finding non-standard solutions is the most popular service on the market. In this situation, it can be assumed that as an alternative to the "economy of formally rational standards", aimed at a quantitative, calculable result and indifferent to the content of interactions, the "gift economy" will acquire a new meaning. In the authors' opinion, with the excessive technolog.-based modern living conditions, the "gift economy" a model prioritizing human relations - as a format for the development of the digital economy should contribute to the further progress of society.
