However, it will not only be a scientific and technological revolution. Its social, humanitarian, and civilizational consequences will be no less grandiose. They are inevitable, because everything in our world – interpersonal relations, economics, morality, politics, law, religion, art, absolutely everything – is ultimately determined by the biological properties of a person and their change is a change in the Foundation of the world order.
It is difficult, for example, even to list the changes in people’s lives as a result of overcoming aging: from the return to work of the mass of rejuvenated pensioners and the acceleration of population growth, to changes in the attitude of future super-long-livers to work, to marriage and family relations, to life and death, to violence, wars, to physical risk, art, entertainment, etc.
No less revolutionary will be the consequences of other areas of biomedicine application.
Problems of the revolution
The final results of this biosocial revolution will be unequivocally positive. It will make people’s lives much more comfortable, safe, and reasonable. However, it will not be without serious problems. It is expected that the processes will be complicated when the inevitable contradiction of new forms of human existence with the previous economic, political, legal principles and mechanisms will require their fundamental, global changes.
The obvious consequence of such a radical restructuring will be a transition period with widespread destabilization of management systems, disruption of economic and production-technological ties. As the analysis shows, it is very likely that this will lead to a special global crisis that cannot be resolved by today’s methods, to a widespread drop in production, a decline in living standards, etc. Only way to mitigate it is to prepare technical, political, and social measures to counteract it in advance.
This will require huge efforts and a lot of time, and much will depend on how timely responsible politicians, scientists, entrepreneurs, and everyone who is able to influence the course of future events will be able to understand their logic and meaning.
It is obvious, however, that the upcoming changes are so non-trivial and go beyond ordinary ideas about the future that it is impossible to understand and predict them without serious scientific analysis…
Revolution today
But biorevolution is not only a problem, even if not so distant, but of the future. Even today, it sets quite specific goals.
The most obvious one is the full activation of biological research. Its main, humanistic meaning is obvious: every day that brings the creation of gene-cell medicine closer is a real saving of millions of human lives.
It also has a political aspect. As information about the priceless benefits of genetic medical technologies spreads, people’s desire to get access to them will gradually expand and strengthen, take the form of a kind of universal ideology, and efforts to create a national biomedicine will become, having pushed aside many other problems, the main criterion for the effectiveness of politicians and States. This will create new factors in domestic and international politics.
They will also affect the economy and business: along with certain problems, new opportunities will open up to meet the changing needs of people and participate in high-tech developments, not only in the field of biotechnology, but also in improving their highly knowledge – intensive tools-physical, technical, information, mathematical, chemical-that require the development of a wide range of natural science and engineering areas.
(By the way, businesses are already reacting quite actively to these opportunities. Abroad, companies have begun to appear EN masse, proclaiming their goal to radically extend human life, and in Moscow, Forbes magazine is preparing a business conference “Investing in immortality”).
3. Time of futurology
Choose the right train
In General, this is quite consistent with Russian directives on scientific and technical mobilization: “Time is being compressed, the scale of tasks and challenges is very large, it is huge. If we continue to spray money, move slowly forward, we will simply be late. …Even in the last car of the ‘technological revolution’ we will not have time to jump” (V. Putin).
Not to waste money means, among other things, to determine priorities, to choose from a variety of “technology trains” correct, reliable routes. This means, first of all, that the chosen technological directions should be realizable, and not just fantasies.
But not only that. It is also important to understand their humanitarian significance, to assess the socio-psychological, political (and not just defense and industrial) consequences of their implementation. It is necessary, figuratively speaking, to decide what will be especially important for people in the future – the technique of moving to Mars, wind energy or life without aging.
(Underestimating this “humanitarian” criterion can be fatal – the Soviet Country, without actually losing the arms race, suffered a catastrophic defeat because of its disregard for the human factor and the need to respond to the changing needs of people, including the emergence of new technologies).
However, this “humanitarian” analysis is in many ways more complex than scientific and technical analysis. It is often required from the authors of discoveries and inventions themselves, although it is quite strange to expect from specialists in electronics or molecular biology a deep understanding of the impact of their work on the future of social relations. Not surprisingly, the result is usually limited to the statement – " this technology will change the world”. On the other hand, there is no more benefit from the philosophy of social scientists who are not immersed in scientific and technical problems.
Only futurological research, i.e. synthesis of analysis of technology development with analysis of their interaction with a person, can give a real idea of future trends. Only this combination of natural science, engineering and human studies knowledge allows you to get a real idea of the future, to understand the laws of its formation.
Unfortunately, in the West today there are no, at least in the public domain, any serious futurological works of this kind. We do not pay attention to this either.
Time of futurology
At the same time, the role of futurological Analytics goes far beyond the choice of technological priorities. Thus, it is quite obvious that an adequate view of the global future is a prerequisite for success in making any strategic decisions in foreign and domestic policy, in the economy, defense, training, etc.
It is less obvious that futurological forecasts are an ideological, worldview factor, a tool for forming ideas about development goals in the public consciousness, opening up new horizons.
This is especially important for young people who feel the need for new, beyond the ordinary, incentives for activity. It is not surprising, therefore, that, for example, the more than dubious idea of the American entrepreneur I. Musk about the future colonization of Mars, aroused the enthusiasm of a considerable number of young people both abroad and here…
This example illustrates another obvious fact:
a society that is not able to formulate its own vision of the future is forced, one way or another, to focus on goals defined by others.
…Today, in a situation of “compressed time”, when the premonition of technological breakthroughs and their global consequences is literally in the air, the development of domestic futurology is of particular importance. No new colliders or spacecraft are needed to analyze future changes, but its importance cannot be overstated. The future must be studied. At least in order not to be late for the train biorevolution.
Bio-revolution