The Cybernetic Revolution and the Future of Technologies

Abstract

The present paper analyzes the evolution of technology from the beginning of human history. We introduce a new paradigm to analyze the causes and trends of the global evolution. We describe the direction of technological transformations and discuss and explain the present and forthcoming technological changes. We also present a detailed analysis of the latest technological revolution, which we denote as ‘Cybernetic,’ and give some forecasts about its development up to the end of the twenty-first century. It is shown that the expansion of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. We argue that the technological transition of the final phase of the Cybernetics revolution will start in medicine, which is to be the keystone of technological convergence forming the system of MANBRIC-technologies (based on medicine, additive, nano-, bio-, robotics, IT, and cognitive technologies). Today, we are at the threshold to the new era of unprecedented control of a human body, considerable life extension, organ replacement, brain–computer interfaces, robotics, genome editing, etc. The authors describe the mechanisms of technological development and discuss possible risks as well as the limits of post-human revolution.