Introduction: Between Human and Post-human Revolutions, or What Future Awaits Us?

In this chapter, the authors introduce the monograph titled ‘Cybernetic Revolution and Global Aging’, present its main ideas and findings and describe its structure which consists of four parts and fifteen chapters. Grinin et al. point out that the current volume, while characterizing in many aspects and details the present state of the world, is mostly devoted to the future, presenting analysis and description of how our world will change over the next hundred years. They deeply analyze two powerful trends, which make up the title: ‘Cybernetic Revolution and Global Aging’ and, as it will be shown, they are tightly interconnected. The authors hope that this research will be interesting for those who study the issues of technological development, global aging, and society, which in their forecasts, by the end of the twenty-first century, will transform into cybernetic society. In this chapter the authors describe the main problems and issues of the monograph. Then they discuss about the increasing possibilities to transform the biological nature of the human organism (all this is defined as the Post-Human Revolution) and point out great and unpredictable dangers of this process. Finally, authors present extended annotations to every part and chapter.