66.1
The Leading Technologies of the Sixth Technological Mode
We have elaborated approaches that connect the long cycles (50–60 years long) and technological waves with superlong cycles of changing production principles (that is, of the whole system of productive forces and organization of production within the World System), which are formed as a result of production revolutions. We have found a close interaction between the stages of production revolutions and principles of production, on the one hand, and long waves and their phases, on the other[1].
In our opinion the sixth technological mode will be characterized by a breakthrough in medical technologies which will integrate with a number of other technologies and together they will make the MANBRIC-complex (medico-additive-nano-bio-robot-info-cognitive technologies). We believe that the sixth technological mode will involve a much wider range of innovative technologies than it is generally assumed, in particular, wider than the NBIC-convergence.
On the whole, the leading trend of the sixth technological wave in our opinion will be the transition to complex self-regulating systems[2].
[1] See Grinin L. E., Grinin A. L. 2015. From Biface to Nanorobots. The World is on the Way to the Epoch of Self-Regulating Systems (the History of Technologies and the Description of Their Future). Moscow: ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House.
[2] This explains why we call the described revolution a cybernetic one: management and information, the key elements of this revolution, are the most important categories of cybernetics.