Convergent and Nature-Like Technologies as the Basis for Sustainable Development in the 21st Century

Abstract

The global challenge of the 21st century is associated with the need to ensure the sustainable development of modern countries. The basic condition for such development is an adequate amount of energy and resources. This means using not oil and gas only but supplies of drinking water, arable land, forests, and other mineral resources are being rapidly depleted. The industrial civilization, in only 200 years of its existence, has put the world on the threshold of a resource collapse. The reason for the current crisis situation is the antagonism of nature and the technosphere created by man. Technical progress has violated the natural resource turnover – a peculiar metabolism of nature, creating technologies that are hostile to it. These technologies, being torn from the natural context, are in fact bad copies of individual elements of natural processes and are based on a highly specialized model of science and industry-specific technologies. Consequently, the transition to sustainable development requires a radical technological modernization of the economy, in particular, widespread diffusion and inter-sectoral transfer of convergent and nature-like technologies.