DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-2.176.2021.134-141

On February 19–20, 2021 at the Orel State University named after I.S. Turgenev with the support of the Government of the Oryol Region and the Center for Strategic Initiatives “Co-society”, the first International Scientific and Practical Conference “Image of the Future” was held.

Vision of the future is an integral part of life of both an individual and society as a whole. Fear of the future or hopes for it, confidence in the possibility of influencing the perspective configuration, interest in what awaits us ahead or indifference to tomorrow — all this enters in social reality that surrounds us. Today’s decisions and actions depend on how tomorrow is seen. The image of the future is a form of the presence of the future in the present, research interest in it is due not to the desire to find out what tomorrow will be, but to the desire to identify the options for the possibilities of the present.

Despite the noticeable presence of the “image of the future” word combination in journalistic and scientific discourse of modern Russia, national studies of this phenomenon are just beginning. The goal, set by the conference organizers, was to unite and coordinate research on the image of the future both at the level of theoretical and methodological developments, and in the study of practical aspects related to functioning of individual and collective images of the future, their influence on current social reality

DOI: 10.33917/es-5.163.2019.48-55

The article examines the possibilities of operating with probabilities of reality (understood as a human interpretation of a picture of the surrounding real and fictional world with derived patterns of conduct) to counteract systemic failures in the social control mechanisms functioning. It is proposed to identify system-parametric interconnections, including the value of information flows and its computational processing, clustering, refinement and application in implementing the “exploration of the future” technology within the framework of a certain supersystem of the digital structure for society management. The article describes the possibilities of penetration into the level of conscious (semantic) and unconscious (emotional) interpretation of events, when it is necessary to provide individuals and groups with logical chains (event series) to interpret history and interpret events regarding problems that may affect maintaining stability of the future basic image. It creates the opportunity for the key points of the future on the “tree” of rambling event chains to navigate a controlled set of possible movement trajectories while managing society as part of the process of shaping the material future, realized through self-tuning of the surrounding subjective reality to the “matrix of key semantic images” in the direction of the basic image of the future.

The article continues the cycle of works studying the “crisis of crises” of the human population, caused by the “re-quantization of reality” — transition from obsolete forms of zoopopulation to the new psychosocial formation. The first part of the paper [1] has analyzed objective and subjective factors that prevent humanity from perceiving the image of a bright future at the moment of “reality re-quantization” — the quantum transition from outdated forms of zoopopulation to the new psychosocial formation: a sharp increase in the complexity level of all systemic constructions, including society, as well as attempts to preserve the obsolete global world order and stagnation of the mankind development through various methods of social destruction. As an answer to specific Russian question “what to do?” the authors suggest obvious things: revival and transition to the dominance of higher forms of motivation, development of moral and ethical qualities as respective anti-entropic factors and closing technologies as the highest form of the population livelihood — all the above on the social state platform

The world economy is a dynamically developing system, where various processes continuously take place, being connected both with interaction and with opposition of the various participants’ interests in the context of globalization, regionalization, economic integration and competition. Today, under the effect of both objective and subjective factors, the environment itself has changed, the course of processes taking place there has changed. As a result, the world economy is undergoing complex transformations and humanity is going through a civilizational crisis. The world is entering a phase of turbulence, chaos, instability and uncertainty. No single country, including developed ones, can yet offer a way out of this phase. Due to disharmony in relationship between scientific-technological progress and spiritual development of mankind, the world is on the threshold of a global catastrophe. This situation has caused a complex problem that we plan to solve on the basis of a scientific approach. We believe that the main reason for violating the right course of events, processes and phenomena lies in the imperfect system of governing society, the state and the world development as a whole. The management system has left the natural path of development, has abandoned the canons of the Universe and the all-round laws of the Universe. Building on new knowledge, theories, concepts and technologies, it is necessary to create such a system of planning and management that will ensure safety and harmonious development of the system “nature – society – man”.

The article based on the internal time theorem proposes the refined principles of psychogenic systems standardization, reflecting the definition of consciousness as a property of an open non-local system. Method of setting a numerical value for the length standard as a second component of consciousness amount measure is described. It is shown that any system of strategic planning and management is derived from its metrology system. The article describes a new self-consistent system of methods for designing strategies, which forms the structure of strategic management technologies in non-digital post-industrial world.

The paper analyzes the crowdsourcing possibilities in predicting the future and developing solutions. The author distinguishes types of crowdsourcing, discusses its psychological characteristics in comparison with the other methods of knowledge management. He discusses cognitive and motivational mechanisms limiting the effectiveness of crowdsourcing as a form of collective intelligence.

Today we are increasingly in favour of the idea that the first to describe the coming catastrophic crisis without encouraging reservations and without distinguishing those right and guilty, was Russian by origin Pitirim Sorokin.