Cultural Evolution in the Long Run and Forthcoming Technological Revolution

The paper analyzes the cultural evolution in respect of its technological aspects from the beginning of the history of humankind. In the paper important problems are regarded. What determines the transition of a society from one level of development to another? One of the most fundamental causes are the global technological transformations. Among all major technological breakthroughs in history the most important are the three production revolutions: 1) the Agrarian Revolution; 2) the Industrial Revolution and 3) the Scientific-Information Revolution which will transform itself into the Cybernetic one. We introduce the Theory of Production Revolutions. This is a new explanatory paradigm which is of value when analyzing causes and trends of global evolution. The paper describes the course of technological transformations in history and demonstrates a possible application of the theory to explain the present and forthcoming technological changes.

          In the paper we analyze evolution of the technological shifts which took place in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and forecast main shifts in the next half of our century. We present a detailed analysis of the latest production revolution which is denoted as ‘Сybernetic’. We give some forecasts about its development in the nearest five decades and up to the end of the twenty-first century. It is shown that the development of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. We argue that at first the transition to the beginning of the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution will start in the field of medicine (in its some innovative directions). In future we will deal with the start of convergence of innovative technologies which will form the system of MBNRIC-technologies (i.e. the technological paradigm based on medicine, bio- and nanotechnologies, robotics, IT and cognitive technologies).