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Future Technological Achievements as a Challenge for Post-singularity Human Society

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Book cover The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures

Part of the book series: World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures ((WSEGF))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on challenges to liberal democracies and welfare states while building a society with different social structures. It examines problems, such as inequality and insufficient employment, of transitioning to a post-singular society. A scenario is constructed where a new society with growing automation, artificial intelligence, but reduced employment will not have time to fully form by the time the second stage of the transition begins. This second stage includes genetic engineering and the possible division of humanity into various non-intersecting and unequal beings. The later cyborgization of people might be necessary for the survival of humanity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     Cf., e.g., Chapter “The 21st Century Singularity in the Big History Perspective. A Re-Analysis” (Korotayev 2020), Chapter “Exploring the Singularity Concept” (LePoire 2020), Chapter “Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change—An Update” (Modis 2020), Chapter “Threshold 9: Big History as a Roadmap for the Future” (Bohan 2020), Chapter “The 21st Century’s “Mysterious Singularity” in the Light of the Big History” (Nazaretyan 2020), Chapter “The Cybernetic Revolution and the Future of Technologies” (Grinin and Grinin 2020), Chapter “Complexity in the Future: Far-From-Equilibrium Systems and Strategic Foresight” (Baker 2020), or Chapter “The Transition to Global Society as a Singularity of Social Evolution” (Dobrolyubov 2020) in this volume.

  2. 2.

    For example, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, prior to the appearance of antiseptics, the average life of a colonial official in the East was from 1 to 3 years, which could have attracted various adventurers and hopeless debtors, but not promising engineers and entrepreneurs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. St. Petersburg Mining University, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation

    Sergey Tsirel

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  1. Sergey Tsirel
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Correspondence to Sergey Tsirel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Higher School of Economics, National Research University, Moscow, Russia

    Andrey V. Korotayev

  2. Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    David J. LePoire

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Tsirel, S. (2020). Future Technological Achievements as a Challenge for Post-singularity Human Society. In: Korotayev, A., LePoire, D. (eds) The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures. World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33730-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33730-8_19

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33730-8

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