Prospects for the Humanities in the Context of the Development of Future Technologies
The article presents an analysis of trends in contemporary humanities knowledge in the context of the development of technological environment and the emergence of technological innovations that cause various anthropological risks. The author examines M. Epshtein’s project of creating the interdisciplinary Center for Humanities Innovations in Great Britain, which is engaged in comprehension and shaping of the future of the humanities. This project demonstrates its technocentric nature, in the context of which the human being is given the role of an instrument, an object of technological influences. In the context of modern trends in technology development, new outlines of humanities knowledge are emerging, a kind of posthumanities, techno-humanities (M. Epshtein), exploring texts, creations, as well as the place and traces in history and modernity of the technological man (homo technologicus) who is formed by contemporary space of cyberculture. In addition, the article shows an alternative to this project - the activities of the Institute of Human Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the 1990s and early 2000s, associated with the names of I. T. Frolov and B. G. Yudin, whose research was aimed at a comprehensive study of man and the formation of humanities knowledge using the methodology of expert evaluation in the humanities, allowing a rapid response to technological threats in order to experience and minimize technological risks.