Noonomy

In this visionary work, the author suggests an original novel concept: the general theory of a new industrial society of the second generation that evolves toward a new quality of public existence–"noonomy." The volume explores the effect of modern technological shifts on human society. The author shows that technologies are about to undergo qualitative changes that will create new opportunities for personal development and the satisfaction of wants and, simultaneously, engender risks associated with growth opportunities of human interference with nature and technogenic stress on the environment. Based on the study of cutting-edge technologies and resulting socioeconomic shifts, Bodrunov makes the conclusion about the upcoming civilizational crisis. The crisis can be overcome through the formation of a new industrial society of the second generation reliant on knowledge-intensive material production and gradual removal of humans from immediate material production processes. These two trends can fully develop only subject to the transition from the current socioeconomic formation to a non-economic one–the noonomy.

The book determines the limits of humans as rational, self-interested agents who make decisions to maximize their own interests, who remain the key figure of mainstream economy. In order to move beyond these limits and prevent self-destruction of human civilization, the author proposes a new methodology for the organization of socioeconomic knowledge–noonomy, which uses technological progress to introduce a rational core into the management of the chaotically developing economy, something which, the author posits, we have failed to accomplish so far due to cultural regression and moral decay.

Systematically substantiating his theory by drawing on a wide range of sources and extensive empirical data, Dr. Bodrunov incorporates various components of rational socio-philosophical, political, and economic analysis with institutional theory and sociocultural analysis and focuses on the geopolitical economy approach to the issue under consideration.

The volume begins with a discussion of the basic principles of the research method used in the book along with the an explanation of how the key role of material production constitutes an essential principle that underlies the approach to explaining social development processes. The author emphasizes an essential and ever-increasing role of knowledge in the development of production technologies that occurs through a change in technological modes and is accompanied by changes in the structure of manufactured products and evolution in the level of saturation and structure of human wants.

The volume then assesses the first steps towards transitioning to a new stage of industrial production, a new type of knowledge-intensive material production that manufactures knowledge-intensive products. The volume considers the risks associated with the unchecked development of new technologies, which, while expanding opportunities for the satisfaction of human wants, also increases environmental stress and requires the need for finding occupations for people who used to be employed in dying professions. The volume examines how humans’ withdrawal from immediate production and the disappearance of economic relations serves as a non-economic way of regulating production activities of an autonomous technosphere by steering its development in accordance with personal development needs.

Introducing the English-speaking audience to a wide array of Russian twentieth-century authors that are little known abroad and whose studies on technological, economic and sociocultural transformations hold truly global significance, this eye-opening book will be of interest to those teaching and interested in the social philosophy of development of the human civilization and strategy of social and economic development.

Sergey Bodrunov, PhD, Sergey Bodrunov is a Professor, Doctor of Economics, and a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a founder (1997) and Director of St. Petersburg S.Y. Witte Institute for New Industrial Development. The main subject of the Institute's exploratory activity is a broad range of issues related to economy industrialization and forecasting of middle-term and long-term institutional, economic, and technological effects. He is the author of over 800 scientific papers, including over 30 monographs concerning the issues of information systems development and society informatization; science and technology progress growth; intellectual property, history, the state and development prospects of the Russian economy; and a strategy of high technology economic development.

Dr. Bodrunov is the author of fundamental papers on the concept of the new industrial society of the second generation (NIS.2) and the theory of noonomy that is recognized worldwide. In particular, his book Noonomy was awarded a prize of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) "For an outstanding contribution to the development of Political Economy in the 21stCentury" (2018). The course on noonomy theory is taught at the leading Russian universities.

Dr. Bodrunov is the President of the Free Economic Society of Russia, the oldest civic organisation of Europe and the world (founded by the decree of the Empress Catherine the Great in 1765), which includes over 300,000 members from 65 regions of Russia. He is also the President of the International Union of Economists, which unites the representatives from 48 countries worldwide and which has had the General Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since 1999.Together with the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr. Bodrunov has been a co-chairman of the Moscow Academic Economic Forum (MAEF), the largest scientific and academic platform of Russia, since 2019. He has extensive experience in business assets management and is a qualified investor in the area of high-tech manufacturing. He has two adult daughters.