What Kind of Future is Humanity Consigned to by the Scientific and Technological Progress?

Cover Page

Cite item

Abstract

In recent decades, more and more works have appeared, the authors of which are trying to predict possible scenarios for the future development of mankind. This article discusses 5 such scenarios: F. Fukuyama believes that all peoples and countries of the globe in the XXI century will develop in the direction of building a liberal-democratic society; Representatives of the Club of Rome in their latest report, based on statistical data of industrial development, substantiate the idea that by the middle of the XXI century. the Earth’s biosphere will become unsuitable for human life and humanity will begin to die out; representatives of the transhumanist movement in their “Manifesto” set themselves the goal of replacing the human biological body with an artificial body by 1245 and thereby saving people from diseases, from old age and even from death itself; English economist D. Susskind in his book “The Future Without Jobs” predicts that in the next two to three decades, robots and artificial intelligence will force people out of all areas of production and discusses the question of how people who are deprived of the opportunity to work will live; Finally, the Israeli historian Yu.N. Harari in his extensive work “Homo Deus” paints a picture of the fact that scientific and technological progress will turn “reasonable man” into “divine man” in the near future. Assessing all these scenarios for the future development of mankind, one involuntarily comes to the conclusion that they all speak of the death of mankind in the near future.

About the authors

Alexander L. Nikiforov

Interregional Non-Governmental Organization “Russian Society for History and Philosophy of Science”

Author for correspondence.
Email: nikiforov_first@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6215-4107

Doctor of Philosophical Sciences

Bd.2, 1\36, Lyalin Lane, Moscow, 105062, Russian Federation

References

  1. Fukuyama F. The end of history? Voprosy filosofii. 1990;(3):134—148. (In Russian).
  2. Von Weizsaecker E, Wijkman A. Come on! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet. New York: Springer; 2018.
  3. Susskind D. Future without work. Technology, automation and whether to be afraid of them. Moscow: Individuum; 2021. (In Russian).
  4. Manifesto of the strategic national movement “Russia 2045”. 2011. Available from: httpwww.2045.rumanifest. (accessed: 29.03.22). (In Russian).
  5. Harari YN. Homo Deus. A Brief History of Tomorrow. Moscow: Sindbad; 2020. (In Russian).

Copyright (c) 2023 Nikiforov A.L.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This website uses cookies

You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website.

About Cookies