Bio-revolution & Futurology

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 is coming

Preface

This book is a brief description of some of the results of many years of study of future social, psychological, biological consequences of the development of new important technologies, especially biotechnology[1 - My first work on the topic: “Nano Sapiens, или Молчание небес”, 2005.].

In this small work, I tried, without much detail and justification, to give a general idea of the emerging biomedicine and the enormous human and civilizational changes that its inevitable introduction would cause.

* * *

In the history of humankind, we can highlight some special (meta-historical) events that drastically change the direction of its development. These events represent the introduction of technologies that are especially important for the existence of people.

Such an event was, for example, the long process of mastering fire by primitive humanity and, above all, using it for the heat treatment of food. The cardinal expansion as a result of this base of food of the ancient people changed their position in the biocenosis, became an impetus to appearance of Homo sapiens. Closer to us, the development of steam and electricity has immeasurably increased human power, led to the industrial revolution, to enormous socio-economic and political changes, to the beginning of the era of scientific and technological development.

As a result, over the past 150—200 years, people have gained

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immeasurably more knowledge about the world and created significantly more technology than in many previous millennia. It is quite logical that this new knowledge today leads to the creation of technologies that will once again change the paradigm of the existence of mankind. Today we are on the threshold of a landmark event – the biotechnology revolution.

This coming revolution of revolutions will be the inevitable consequence of the great success of science, which has now reached an understanding of almost all the basic mechanisms of the phenomenon of life.

It is quite natural that this understanding will inevitably be followed by the creation of a new biomedicine, which will be able to save a people from many natural imperfections.

Already the first steps in this direction open fantastic prospects – not only the complete deliverance of people from thousands of diseases, but also the victory over the curses of aging and inevitable mortality.

The pursuit of this goal will soon become a new universal ideology, and its achievement – the greatest act of humanism in history. However, many difficulties and challenges remain to be overcome along the way…

    Vladimir Kishinets, PhD.
    kishinets@mail.ru.

1. ACTUAL IMMORTALITY

Listen, I tell you a mystery:

We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed…

The First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians

Predictions

It is impossible to describe in such a small work all the scientific and technological prerequisites for the creation of a new biomedicine that have appeared in recent years[2 - More information about them can be found in my work “Актуальное бессмертие. 1. Надежды и перспективы”, 2017, (Actual Immortality. 1. Hope and Prospects).]. The evidentiary presentation of their details would take too much space.

Therefore, we will simply confirm our statements with a few facts and quotes from authoritative sources:

April 2010. Pope Benedict XVI: “Man’s resistance to death becomes evident”, modern science seeks to find means that save not only from all diseases, “but for our ultimate destiny – for death itself. Surely the medicine of immortality must exist.”[3 - http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2010 /documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20100403_veglia-pasquale_en.html]

In 2013, at the opening of the established Google company “Life” (Calico), it was announced that its goal – to extend human life for at least 500 years. Today all activities of the company are classified.

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October 2017. President Vladimir Putin: “… in the near future [humanity will enter] in a very difficult and very critical period,” science is capable of “getting into the genetic code” and approaching possibility of creating people “with given characteristics.”[4 - http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/55890]