Technological Beyond

Abstract

In our condition as human beings, we have experienced a love-and-hate relationship with technology since the very beginning: from primitive humans (probably scared the very first time they saw fire) to 19th century Luddites to the recent conspiracy theories that link 5G to COVID-19, human beings have dreaded technology. But, for bad or for good, machines—which could be loosely defined from an etymological point of view as “structures of any kind created by humans”—have been, are, and probably will be an essential part in the history of mankind, thus playing a fundamental in the social evolution of human. This chapter attempts to shed some light and provide some insights into plausible conjectures by exploring future developments, either in the short and medium or in the long term, which might result from a synergistic context where exponentially-increasing technological innovation may lead to a radical change, an evolutionary paradigm shift in human life and civilization, by reaching toward a post-technological era characterized by consciousness of the noosphere.