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The Future Society and the Transition to It
This chapter analyzes the current historical situation and the prospects for its further development. It is evident that drastic changes are currently taking place in the world, reflecting a phase transition in historical development, namely, the transition from the late industrial phase to the cybernetic phase, features of which are largely determined by the ongoing Cybernetic Revolution. One could also talk about a transition from an economically organized World System to a politically organized one. Sadovnichy et al. consider the most important features of the ongoing changes and their impact on various spheres of society’s life, taking into account various scenarios of the future global evolution. In particular, Sadovnichy et al. discuss the possible transition from a liberal market capitalist society to a model of society with an equal distribution (but still preserving private initiative and the spirit of enterprise). This global transition is facilitated by the limitation of extensive growth opportunities due to objective reasons. Modern transition is also connected with the achievement of a high level of technological development, which objectively demands the transformation of social, political, and international relations to correspond to the level of technology. There are some contradictions with respect to technological development. On the one hand, the benefits of new technology implementation are significant for solving many modern problems in providing a higher quality of life, since for the first time in history, it is becoming possible to satisfy the material needs of the majority of the world’s population. On the other hand, the development of technological innovations leads to the formation of socio-technical self-regulating systems based on artificial intelligence, the introduction of which also carries with it serious risks, and their scale remains unknown. At the moment, the rate of demographic growth is declining, alleviating the problem of overpopulation of the Earth. However, the high-income countries and some of the low-income ones will experience depopulation, while on the contrary, in most Sub-Saharan African countries, fast population growth will continue for a few decades. Therefore, the optimization of demographic processes is an extremely important task. It is very important that the development of medical technologies leads to an increase in life expectancy, as well as to a change in the demographic structure of society, i.e., to global aging, which is leading to changing social and labor force structure. Therefore, ensuring the quality of life of the aging population will present a critical problem. Aging at the same time gradually reduces the acuteness of material problems and their role in motivating people’s activities, while at the same time increasing the role of ideological factors. In this regard, it makes sense to talk about the formation of a new type of society (cybernetic W-society), since the ongoing phase transition will affect all the foundations of life and the organization of society. The transition to a new model of society is inevitably interconnected with global political transformations, involving the formation of a new world order in which new principles of interaction between states will appear with a gradual rejection of competitive confrontation in favor of mutually beneficial cooperation.
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