IX.7. Scientific and technological revolution, its technological and social consequences
Scientific and technological revolution (STR) is a concept used to refer to those qualitative transformations that took place in science and technology in the second half of the twentieth century. The beginning of the scientific and technological revolution dates back to the mid-1940s. XX century In the course of it, the process of turning science into a direct productive force is completed. Scientific and technological revolution changes the conditions, nature and content of labor, the structure of productive forces, the social division of labor, the sectoral and professional structure of society, leads to a rapid increase in labor productivity, affects all aspects of society, including culture, life, people's psychology, the relationship of society with nature .
The scientific and technological revolution is a long process that has two main prerequisites - scientific and technological and social. The most important role in the preparation of the scientific and technological revolution was played by the successes of natural science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as a result of which a radical change took place in the views on matter and a new picture of the world was formed. The following were discovered: the electron, the phenomenon of radioactivity, X-rays, the theory of relativity and quantum theory were created. Science has made a breakthrough into the microworld and high speeds.
A revolutionary shift also occurred in technology, primarily under the influence of the use of electricity in industry and transport. Radio was invented and became widespread. Aviation was born. In the 40s. science has solved the problem of splitting the atomic nucleus. Mankind has mastered atomic energy. The emergence of cybernetics was of paramount importance. Research into the creation of atomic reactors and the atomic bomb forced the capitalist states for the first time to organize interaction between science and industry within the framework of a major national scientific and technical project. It served as a school for nationwide scientific and technical research programs.
A sharp increase in allocations for science and the number of research institutions began. 1 Scientific activity has become a mass profession. In the second half of the 50s. Under the influence of the successes of the USSR in the study of outer space and the Soviet experience in the organization and planning of science in most countries, the creation of national bodies for planning and managing scientific activities began. Direct ties between scientific and technical developments have intensified, and the use of scientific achievements in production has accelerated. In the 50s. electronic computers (computers) are created and are widely used in scientific research, production, and then management, which have become a symbol of scientific and technological revolution. Their appearance marks the beginning of the gradual transfer to the machine of performing the elementary logical functions of a person. The development of informatics, computer technology, microprocessors and robotics created the conditions for the transition to integrated automation of production and control. A computer is a fundamentally new type of technology that changes the position of a person in the production process.
At the present stage of its development, the scientific and technological revolution is characterized by the following main features.
1). .The transformation of science into a direct productive force as a result of merging together a revolution in science, technology and production, strengthening the interaction between them and reducing the time from the birth of a new scientific idea to its production implementation. 1
2). A new stage in the social division of labor associated with the transformation of science into the leading sphere of the development of society.
3). Qualitative transformation of all elements of the productive forces - the object of labor, the tools of production and the worker himself; increasing intensification of the entire production process due to its scientific organization and rationalization, constant updating of technology, energy conservation, reduction of material consumption, capital intensity and labor intensity of products. The new knowledge acquired by society makes it possible to reduce the cost of raw materials, equipment and labor, recouping the costs of research and development many times over.
4) A change in the nature and content of labor, an increase in the role of creative elements in it; the transformation of the production process from a simple labor process into a scientific process.
5). The emergence on this basis of the material and technical prerequisites for reducing manual labor and replacing it with mechanized labor. In the future, there is an automation of production based on the use of electronic computers.
6). Creation of new energy sources and artificial materials with predetermined properties.
7). The enormous increase in the social and economic significance of information activity, the gigantic development of the mass media communications .
8). Growth in the level of general and special education and culture of the population.
9). Increase in free time.
10). An increase in the interaction of sciences, a comprehensive study of complex problems, the role of social sciences.
eleven). A sharp acceleration of all social processes, further internationalization of all human activity on a planetary scale, the emergence of so-called global problems.
Along with the main features of the scientific and technological revolution, certain stages of its development and the main scientific, technical and technological directions characteristic of these stages can be distinguished.
Achievements in the field of atomic physics (the implementation of a nuclear chain reaction that opened the way to the creation of atomic weapons), the successes of molecular biology (expressed in the disclosure of the genetic role of nucleic acids, the decoding of the DNA molecule and its subsequent biosynthesis), as well as the emergence of cybernetics (which established a certain analogy between living organisms and some technical devices that are information converters) gave rise to the scientific and technological revolution and determined the main natural science directions of its first stage. This stage, which began in the 1940s and 1950s, continued almost until the end of the 1970s. The main technical areas of the first stage of the scientific and technological revolution were nuclear power engineering, electronic computers (which became the technical basis of cybernetics), and rocket and space technology.
Since the end of the 1970s, the second stage of the scientific and technological revolution began, which continues to this day. The most important characteristic of this stage of the scientific and technological revolution was the latest technologies, which did not exist in the middle of the twentieth century (which is why the second stage of the scientific and technological revolution was even called the "scientific and technological revolution"). These latest technologies include flexible automated production, laser technology, biotechnology, etc. At the same time, the new stage of scientific and technological revolution not only did not discard many traditional technologies, but made it possible to significantly increase their efficiency. For example, flexible automated production systems for processing the object of labor still use traditional cutting and welding, and the use of new structural materials (ceramics, plastics) has significantly improved the performance of the well-known internal combustion engine. “Raising the known limits of many traditional technologies, the current stage of scientific and technological progress brings them, as it seems today, to the “absolute” exhaustion of the possibilities inherent in them and thereby prepares the prerequisites for an even more decisive revolution in the development of productive forces.” 1
The essence of the second stage of the scientific and technological revolution, defined as the "scientific and technological revolution", is an objectively natural transition from various kinds of external, mainly mechanical, influences on objects of labor to high-tech (submicron) influences at the microstructure level of both inanimate and living matter. Therefore, the role played by genetic engineering and nanotechnology at this stage of scientific and technological revolution is not accidental.
Over the past decades, the range of research in the field of genetic engineering has significantly expanded: from the production of new microorganisms with predetermined properties to the cloning of higher animals (and, in a possible future, of man himself). The end of the twentieth century was marked by unprecedented success in deciphering the genetic basis of man. In 1990 The international project "Human Genome" was launched, which aims to obtain a complete genetic map of Homo sapiens. More than twenty most scientifically developed countries, including Russia, take part in this project.
Scientists managed to obtain a description of the human genome much earlier than planned (2005-2010). Already on the eve of the new, XXI century, sensational results were achieved in the implementation of this project. It turned out that the human genome contains from 30 to 40 thousand genes (instead of the previously assumed 80-100 thousand). This is not much more than that of a worm (19 thousand genes) or fruit flies (13.5 thousand). However, according to the director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician E. Sverdlov, “it is too early to complain that we have fewer genes than expected. First, as organisms become more complex, the same gene performs many more functions and is able to encode more proteins. Secondly, there is a mass of combinatorial options that simple organisms do not have. Evolution is very economical: in order to create a new one, it is engaged in “turning over” the old, and not inventing everything again. In addition, even the most elementary particles, like a gene, are actually incredibly complex. Science will just go to the next level of knowledge.” 2
The deciphering of the human genome has provided enormous, qualitatively new scientific information for the pharmaceutical industry. However, it turned out that the use of this scientific wealth of the pharmaceutical industry today is beyond its power. We need new technologies that will appear, as expected, in the next 10-15 years. It is then that the drugs that come directly to the diseased organ will become a reality, bypassing all side effects. Transplantology will reach a qualitatively new level, cell and gene therapy will develop, medical diagnostics will change radically, and so on.
One of the most promising areas in the field of new technologies is nanotechnology. The sphere of nanotechnology, one of the most promising areas in the field of the latest technologies, has become the processes and phenomena occurring in the microcosm, measured in nanometers, i.e. billionths of a meter (one nanometer is about 10 atoms located close one after the other). Back in the late 1950s, the prominent American physicist R. Feynman suggested that the ability to build electrical circuits from several atoms could have "a huge number of technological applications." However, at that time no one took this assumption of the future Nobel laureate seriously. 1
Subsequently, research in the field of physics of semiconductor nanoheterostructures laid the foundations for new information and communication technologies. The successes achieved in these studies, which are of great importance for the development of optoelectronics and high-speed electronics, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000, which was shared by the Russian scientist, Academician Zh.A. Alferov and American scientists G. Kremer and J. Kilby.
High growth rates in the 80s-90s of the twentieth century in the information technology industry were the result of the universal nature of the use of information technologies, their wide distribution in almost all sectors of the economy. In the course of economic development, the efficiency of material production has become increasingly determined by the scale of use and the qualitative level of development of the non-material sphere of production. This means that a new resource is involved in the production system - information (scientific, economic, technological, organizational and managerial), which, integrating with the production process, largely precedes it, determines its compliance with changing conditions, completes the transformation of production processes into scientific and production processes. .
Since the 1980s, first in Japanese, then in Western economic literature, the term “softization of the economy” has become widespread. Its origin is connected with the transformation of the non-material component of information-computing systems (“soft” means of software, mathematical support) into a decisive factor in increasing the efficiency of their use (compared to the improvement of their real, “hard” hardware). It can be said that "... the increase in the influence of the non-material component on the entire course of reproduction is the essence of the concept of softization." 1
The softization of production as a new technical and economic trend marked those functional shifts in economic practice that became widespread during the deployment of the second stage of scientific and technological revolution. A distinctive feature of this stage “... lies in the simultaneous coverage of almost all elements and stages of material and non-material production, the sphere of consumption, and the creation of prerequisites for a new level of automation. This level provides for the unification of the processes of development, production and sale of products and services into a single continuous flow based on the interaction of such areas of automation that are developing today in many respects independently, such as information and computer networks and data banks, flexible automated production, automatic design systems, CNC machines, systems of transportation and accumulation of products and control of technological processes, robotic complexes. The basis for such integration is the wide involvement in the production consumption of a new resource - information, which opens the way for the transformation of previously discrete production processes into continuous ones, creates the prerequisites for moving away from Taylorism. When assembling automated systems, a modular principle is used, as a result of which the problem of operational change, equipment readjustment becomes an organic part of the technology and is carried out at minimal cost and with virtually no loss of time. 2
The second stage of the scientific and technical revolution turned out to be largely associated with such a technological breakthrough as the emergence and rapid spread of microprocessors on large integrated circuits (the so-called "microprocessor revolution"). This largely led to the formation of a powerful information-industrial complex, including electronic computer engineering, microelectronic industry, the production of electronic means of communication and a variety of office and household equipment. This large complex of industries and services is focused on information services for both social production and personal consumption (a personal computer, for example, has already become a common durable household item).
The decisive invasion of microelectronics is changing the composition of fixed assets in non-material production, primarily in the credit and financial sphere, trade, and healthcare. But this does not exhaust the influence of microelectronics on the sphere of non-material production. New industries are being created, the scale of which is comparable to the branches of material production. For example, in the United States, the sale of software tools and services related to computer maintenance already in the 80s exceeded in monetary terms the production volumes of such large sectors of the American economy as aviation, shipbuilding or machine tool building.
On the agenda of modern science is the creation of a quantum computer (QC). There are several currently intensively developed areas: solid-state QC on semiconductor structures, liquid computers, QC on "quantum filaments", on high-temperature semiconductors, etc. In fact, all branches of modern physics are presented in attempts to solve this problem. 1
So far, we can only talk about the achievement of some preliminary results. Quantum computers are still being designed. But when they leave the confines of the laboratories, the world will be much different. The expected technological breakthrough should surpass the achievements of the "semiconductor revolution", as a result of which vacuum vacuum tubes gave way to silicon crystals.
Thus, the scientific and technological revolution entailed the restructuring of the entire technical basis, the technological mode of production. At the same time, it caused serious changes in the social structure of society and influenced the spheres of education, leisure, and so on.
You can see what changes are taking place in society under the influence of scientific and technological progress. Changes in the structure of production are characterized by the following figures . 2 At the beginning of the 19th century, almost 75 percent of the US labor force was employed in agriculture; by the middle of it, this share had dropped to 65 percent, while in the early 1940s it dropped to 20 percent, having decreased by a little over three times in a hundred and fifty years. Meanwhile, over the past five decades, it has decreased by another eight times and today, according to various estimates, is from 2.5 to 3 percent. Slightly differing in absolute values, but completely coinciding in their dynamics, similar processes developed in the same years in most European countries. At the same time, there was a no less dramatic change in the share of those employed in industry. If at the end of the First World War the shares of workers in agriculture, industry and the service sector (primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of production) were approximately equal, then by the end of the Second World War the share of the tertiary sector exceeded the shares of the primary and secondary combined. If in 1900 63 percent of Americans employed in the national economy produced material goods, and 37 percent - services, then in 1990 this ratio was already 22 to 78, and the most significant changes have occurred since the early 50s, when the cumulative growth in employment in agriculture, extractive and manufacturing industries, construction, transport and public utilities, that is, in all sectors that can be attributed to one degree or another to the sphere of material production.
In the 1970s, in Western countries (in Germany since 1972, in France since 1975, and then in the USA), an absolute reduction in employment in material production began, and first of all in the material-intensive sectors of mass production. If in general in the US manufacturing industry from 1980 to 1994 employment decreased by 11 percent, then in metallurgy the decline was more than 35 percent. The trends that have emerged over the past decades seem irreversible today; for example, experts predict that over the next ten years, 25 of the 26 jobs created in the United States will be in the service sector, and the total share of workers employed in it will reach 83 percent of the total workforce by 2025. If in the early 1980s the share of workers directly employed in manufacturing operations did not exceed 12 percent in the US, today it has dropped to 10 percent and continues to decline; however, there are also sharper estimates that determine this indicator at a level of less than 5 percent of the total number of employees. For example, in Boston, one of the centers for the development of high technologies, in 1993, 463 thousand people were employed in the service sector, while only 29 thousand were employed directly in production. At the same time, these very impressive figures should not, in our opinion, serve the basis for recognizing the new society as a “service society”.
The volume of material goods produced and consumed by society in the context of the expansion of the service economy does not decrease, but grows. Back in the 1950s, J. Fourastier noted that the production base of the modern economy remains and will remain the basis on which the development of new economic and social processes takes place, and its importance should not be underestimated. The share of industrial production in the US GNP in the first half of the 90s fluctuated between 22.7 and 21.3 percent, having declined very slightly since 1974, and for the EU countries it was about 20 percent (from 15 percent in Greece to 30 percent in Germany) . At the same time, the growth in the volume of material goods is increasingly ensured by an increase in the productivity of the workers employed in their creation. If in 1800 an American farmer spent 344 hours of labor on the production of 100 bushels of grain, and in 1900 - 147, then today it takes only three man-hours; in 1995, the average labor productivity in the manufacturing industry was five times higher than in 1950.
Thus, modern society is not characterized by an obvious decline in the share of material production and can hardly be called a "service society". We, speaking about the decrease in the role and importance of material factors, mean that an increasing share of social wealth is not the material conditions of production and labor, but knowledge and information, which become the main resource of modern production in any of its forms.
The formation of modern society as a system based on the production and consumption of information and knowledge began in the 1950s. Already in the early 60s, some researchers estimated the share of the "knowledge industry" in the US gross national product in the range from 29.0 to 34.5 percent. Today this indicator is determined at the level of 60 percent. Estimates of employment in the information industries turned out to be even higher: for example, in 1967 the share of workers in the "information sector" was 53.5 percent of total employment, and in the 1980s. estimates as high as 70 percent have been offered. Knowledge, as a direct productive force, is becoming the most important factor in the modern economy, and the sector that creates it turns out to be the most significant and important resource of production that supplies the economy. There is a transition from expanding the use of material resources to reducing the need for them.
Some examples illustrate this very clearly. In the first decade of the "information" era alone, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the gross national product of the post-industrial countries increased by 32 percent and energy consumption by 5 percent; in the same years, with the growth of the gross domestic product by more than 25 percent, American agriculture reduced energy consumption by 1.65 times. With a national product that has grown 2.5 times, the United States uses less ferrous metals today than it did in 1960; between 1973 and 1986, the average new American car's gasoline consumption fell from 17.8 to 8.7 liters per 100 km, and the cost of materials in the cost of microprocessors used in today's computers is less than 2 percent. As a result, over the past hundred years, the physical mass of American exports has remained virtually unchanged in annual terms, despite a twenty-fold increase in its real value. At the same time, the most high-tech products are rapidly becoming cheaper, contributing to their wide distribution in all areas of the economy: for example, from 1980 to 1995, the memory capacity of a standard personal computer increased by more than 250 times, and its price per unit of hard disk memory decreased between 1983 and 1995 by more than 1,800 times. As a result, an economy of “unlimited resources” arises, the limitlessness of which is due not to the scale of production, but to a reduction in the need for them.
The consumption of information products is constantly increasing. In 1991, US companies' spending on the acquisition of information and information technology, which reached $112 billion, exceeded the cost of acquiring fixed assets, which amounted to $107 billion; the very next year, the gap between these figures grew to $25 billion. Finally, by 1996, the first figure actually doubled, to $212 billion, while the second remained virtually unchanged. By early 1995, the American economy generated about three-quarters of the value added generated by industry through information. As the information sector of the economy develops, it becomes more and more obvious that knowledge is the most important strategic asset of any enterprise, a source of creativity and innovation, the basis of modern values and social progress - that is, a truly unlimited resource.
Thus, the development of modern society leads not so much to the replacement of the production of material goods by the production of services, but to the displacement of the material components of the finished product by information components. The consequence of this is a decrease in the role of raw materials and labor as basic production factors, which is a prerequisite for moving away from the mass creation of reproducible goods as the basis for the well-being of society. The demassification and dematerialization of production are an objective component of the processes leading to the formation of a post-economic society.
On the other hand, over the past decades there has been another, no less important and significant process. We have in mind the decline in the role and importance of material incentives that induce a person to production.
All of the above allows us to conclude that scientific and technological progress leads to a global transformation of society. Society is entering a new phase of its development, which many sociologists define as the "information society".
scientific revolution social consequence
The transformation of individual and joint activities of people towards the intensification and unification of its nature, the release of a significant amount of free time and human resources have led to significant qualitative changes in the lifestyle of modern man. It is the development of scientific and technological revolution that is primarily associated with the transition from industrial to the so-called "post-industrial society", which is characterized by: the priority is not production, but information and service spheres, the spread of professionalism in all areas of activity and the transition from a class to a professionally stratified society, the leading role scientific elites in the determination of public policy and management, a high degree of global integration in both the economy and culture.
Modern philosophy and sociology are characterized by an ambiguous assessment of the phenomenon of scientific and technological revolution. Traditionally, there are two main approaches to assessing scientific progress - the optimistic one, which considers the scientific and technological revolution as a natural stage of social and scientific development in the general context of the modernization of the human community, which will ensure the further development of human civilization, and the pessimistic one, which focuses on the negative consequences of technical development. (environmental disasters, the threat of a nuclear apocalypse, the ability to manipulate consciousness, the standardization of human activity and the alienation of the individual, the negative impact of technology on the human body and psyche, etc.).
Today, the achievements of science in one way or another affect the life of every person, no matter where he lives and whatever he does. For example, an illiterate resident of some Afro-Asian country - with a transistor, literacy in India - through satellite television. A modern manager - in a car, with a computer, cellular communication - is able to perform his functional duties, being in a traffic jam.
The amount of knowledge, methods of mastering it, the duration of training, and much more depend on the pace and depth of the deployment of scientific and technological revolution. The main learning paradigm is changing. The main thing is not the assimilation of a certain amount of information, but the ability to find it, to work with this information. Figuratively speaking, not the specialist who knows a lot is valued, but the one who knows where you can quickly find the information you need. One of the main goals of education is the formation of a person's need for self-education, in the constant replenishment of their knowledge.
For people of predominantly physical labor, their own problems arise. Under the influence of modern technological and information upheavals, the time for updating technologies in leading industries is reduced to an average of 5 years. Consequently, the worker, remaining within the framework of the former profession, is forced to change it, constantly retrain. All this will require from a person professional flexibility, mobility, high adaptability and, of course, constant improvement of their professional knowledge.
Also, new technical means create conditions for the dissemination of scientific, technical, cultural and artistic knowledge, enrichment of people with information and cultural values.
But the adaptation of a person to the environment that he has adapted to his life is a very difficult process. The rapid development of the technosphere is ahead of the evolutionarily established adaptive capabilities of man. Difficulties in matching the psycho-physiological potentials of a person with the requirements of modern technology and technology have been recorded everywhere both theoretically and practically. Increasing mental stress, which a person is increasingly faced with in the modern world, causes the accumulation of negative emotions and often stimulates the use of artificial means of relieving stress. The constantly changing world cuts off many roots, traditions, makes a person live in different cultures, adapt to constantly renewing circumstances.
The negative consequences of the scientific and technological revolution can also include the growing gap in the level of economic and cultural development between the developed industrial countries of the West and the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America; an ecological crisis generated by a catastrophic intrusion of man into the biosphere, accompanied by pollution of the natural environment - the atmosphere, soil, water basins - by industrial and agricultural waste; displacement of most of the population from the active sphere of activity.
Also, one of the negative factors of modern scientific and technological revolution is the stratification of mankind. Man is a social being, he never evaluates absolute indicators, but evaluates everything in comparison. Stratification occurs in several ways. Stratification by property. The NTR will strengthen it due to the fact that everyone has different starting opportunities, and the result of the NTR will be the multiplication of the initial capital. Stratification according to age. The acceleration of the pace of scientific and technological development has become obvious. The rapid change in living conditions caused by this acceleration is one of the factors negatively affecting the formation of a homeostatic system of customs and norms in the modern world. Stratification on an intellectual basis.
Of fundamental importance, however, is not the compilation of a somewhat exhaustive list of problems, but the identification of their origin, nature and characteristics, and most importantly, the search for scientifically substantiated and practically realistic ways to solve them. It is with this that a number of general theoretical, socio-philosophical and methodological issues in their study are connected, which by now have developed into a consistent concept of the problems of our time, based on the achievements of modern science and philosophy.
From all of the above, it is clear that the scientific and technological revolution, no matter how effective it may be, only provides a basis for the development of a person, but it is difficult or even almost impossible to predict how he uses this base.
Conclusion
The all-round development of a person begins, undoubtedly, from the main side of human activity - from labor, creative and creative. It is in it that his inner essence is most fully manifested. In this regard, the prospect of such a “facilitation” of human labor as a result of the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, portrayed by some futurologists, is very doubtful, when a person will only watch machines. Labor brings joy to a person and even with its certain intensity, since it sets rather complex mental and physical tasks for a person, which he solves with pleasure and thereby asserts himself.
Most people already reflexively react to typical situations, this is quite understandable, life is accelerating more and more, at the same time becoming more complicated, there is no time to think for a long time decisions must be made here and now, otherwise you may not have time. Science is moving forward by leaps and bounds, the main feature of modern science is the formalization of the problem, with its subsequent decomposition and reduction to typical ones, resolved according to known algorithms, and since life is now completely unthinkable without the achievements of science, all actions occurring in society are reduced to typical with known results. And society itself, over the years of its existence, has developed persistent stereotypes of behavior. Undoubtedly, all this is correct, but life is not always possible to squeeze into the rigid framework of our ideas about it.
In the face of weakening confrontation in the world, it is possible to exclude the development of new types of weapons, to solve global problems - the global environmental crisis, famine, epidemics, illiteracy, etc. Scientific and technological revolution allows you to eliminate the threat of an ecological catastrophe, use the energy of the sun, water, wind, and the depths of the Earth.
Progress gives humanity opportunities that open up new aspects of the world for us. Science and technology have become the driving forces of civilization. Without them it is impossible to imagine the further development of mankind. A turn to a new form of progress is expected. Without everything we have achieved, we cannot become better. I think that this form of progress will tend towards wastelessness, a minimum of resource consumption, the problems of man and machines, the intense rhythm of life and self-destruction in the technology environment will disappear.
Social consequences of scientific and technological revolution
Under the influence of scientific and technological revolution, there were significant changes in the social structure of society. Along with the accelerated growth of the urban population, the share of those employed in the service and trade sectors increased at an enormous pace. The appearance of the worker was changing, his qualifications, the level of general education and professional training were growing; level of pay, and with it the level and style of life. The social status of industrial workers was increasingly approaching the indicators of the life of employees and specialists. On the basis of structural changes in the national economy, the sectoral composition of the working class changed. There was a reduction in employment in industries with a high degree of labor intensity (mining, traditional light industries, etc.) and an increase in employment in new industries (radio electronics, computers, nuclear energy, polymer chemistry, etc.).
By the beginning of the 70s. the size of the middle strata of the population ranged from 1/4 to 1/3 of the active population. There was an increase in the share of small and medium-sized owners.
In the 70s. The West has increasingly reoriented its economy towards social needs. Scientific and technical programs have become more closely linked with social ones. This was not long in affecting the improvement of technical equipment and the quality of labor, the growth of working people's incomes, and the growth of per capita consumption.
Minuses
Global environmental crisis
Demographic explosion
Scientific and technical progress
There are statements about the impending crisis of scientific and technological progress.
Positive processes of scientific and technological revolution
1) Expanding the horizons of knowledge.
2) Global networks and infrastructure.
3) Opportunities for spiritual growth.
4) Humanization of knowledge.
5) Independence from external factors.
Mood now - Excellent
In my report, I would like to talk about the impact of the scientific and technological revolution on life on our planet. After all, everything that we have and what we use, people have achieved thanks to new ideas. The innovations of our century - from skyscrapers to artificial satellites - testify to the inexhaustible ingenuity of man.
There were seven wonders of the world in the ancient world. In the modern world, there are immeasurably more of them. Unlike the wondrous creations of antiquity, which - except for the Egyptian pyramids - have largely turned to dust, the wonders of our century will probably continue to exist as long as mankind lives.
The builders of classical antiquity had only natural materials, such as stone and wood, and their skillful hands. Modern wonders such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building would not have been possible without high-strength steel. The Romans got cement, but they couldn't produce enough to build the Grand Coulee Dam.
The Industrial Revolution was brought about by the power of steam, which multiplied the strength of human muscles many times over. Electronics has spawned a second revolution, the consequences of which are likely to be just as global. News transmitted via satellites travels at the speed of light, making the world one. Computers allow us to process information at a speed unimaginable 50 years ago.
The miracles of the present time also give rise to deep problems. Progress teaches the necessary caution: any invention can be used both for good and for evil. Yet the accomplishments of the modern world are awe-inspiring. They surpassed poets and playwrights, they transformed the world.
I took the material from the book "Russia and the World" as the basis for my essay, but since the topic is not fully disclosed in this book, I took more specific information from other books. I got information about the specific achievements of the scientific and technological revolution from the encyclopedia "When, where, how why did this happen". Also, this book was useful to me for drawing up the outline of the abstract, the subheadings of the sections of which I took from this book. I used the material of the book "The Forest for the Trees" to open the section of the abstract "Medicine".
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL REVOLUTION
The concept of scientific and technological revolution
The concept of "progress" in combination with the epithets "scientific", "social", etc. It is no coincidence that it has become one of the most used when it comes to the history of the 20th century. Along with turning political events, the past century was marked by tremendous progress in the spheres of human knowledge, material production and culture, and changes in people's daily lives. In the second half of the century, this process accelerated significantly. In the 50s. there was a scientific and technical, scientific and technological revolution, which is characterized by close interaction between science and technology, the rapid introduction of scientific achievements in various fields of activity, the use of new materials and technologies, and production automation. In the 70s. the information revolution unfolded, which contributed to the transformation of the industrial society into a post-industrial or information society.
2. Achievements of scientific and technological revolution
In the field of atomic physics
Let us name the most important achievements of scientific and technological progress of the 20th century. In the field of atomic physics, an actual scientific and practical problem as far back as the 40s. was the production and use of atomic energy. In 1942, in the USA, a group of scientists led by E. Fermi created the first uranium reactor. The atomic fuel obtained in it was used to create atomic weapons (two of the three atomic bombs created at that time were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). In 1946, an atomic reactor was created in the USSR (I.V. Kurchatov supervised the work), in 1949 the first test of Soviet atomic weapons took place. After the war, the question arose of the peaceful use of atomic energy. In 1954, the world's first power plant was built in the USSR, and in 1957, the first nuclear icebreaker "Lenin" was launched. 1
In medecine
The scientific and technological revolution had a great influence on medicine. When the South African surgeon Christian Barnard performed the first human heart transplant in 1967, many were concerned about the moral aspect of the operation.
Today, hundreds of people live normally with someone else's heart.
1 Russia and the world in the 20th century p. 214
Successful transplants are made not only of the heart, but also of the kidneys, liver, and lungs. Artificial "spare parts" for humans have been created, and artificial joints have become commonplace. Surgeons use a laser as a scalpel and miniature television cameras during operations. 1
Thanks to the discovery of the structure of DNA, it became clear how many life forms arose. The main building blocks of a living organism are proteins, which are formed inside cells by combining 20 different amino acids in different sequences. There are thousands of possible
variants of their compounds, giving thousands of different proteins. But, how and what determines a particular amino acid sequence and protein composition?
By 1950, it was already established that the DNA molecule (first discovered by Friedrich Miescher in 1969 as part of the cell nucleus) is the material that controls the production of proteins and the hereditary traits of all living things. The structure of DNA discovered by Watson and Crick suggested how hereditary information is transmitted during cell division and how DNA determines the structure of the body's proteins.
Unraveling the genetic code explained the origins of hereditary diseases. A single mistake in the order of the bases in DNA can be enough to interrupt the process of forming a normal protein. The modern level of genetics gives a chance to correct the mistakes that cause genetic diseases. Gene therapy identifies a defective gene and offers an arsenal of tools to fix it. 2
2 Collection "Forest for Trees" p. 15
Having joined the scientific and technological revolution, Japanese scientists took up biotechnology, microelectronics with robotics, computer science, the creation of new materials, and nuclear energy. Computer software, watchmaking, photographic film, industrial electronics, and soda ash firms have teamed up to assemble a device that can decipher DNA, the genetic material that determines the development of all living organisms. The development of the biotechnology industry depends on the knowledge of genetic information, and understanding the secrets of human DNA opens the way to the successful treatment of all diseases, including those that are now considered fatal.
DNA research requires numerous and repetitive laboratory experiments. The company Seiko, known for its watches, has proposed using robots to move the particles of genetic material, which it usually uses in the high-precision assembly of watch movements. Fuji Film Company provided a special jelly-like emulsion. It helps to separate genes into different elements. The electronics and electrical engineering firm Hitati has supplied laboratories with computers that translate the "picture code" of DNA elements into data suitable for reading by electronic computers.
In the field of automotive and aircraft manufacturing
The scientific and technical thought is especially brightly manifested in the automotive and aircraft industries. Concorde, the first supersonic airliner in the world, is the result of fourteen years of creative research and testing by British and French designers. It flies at more than twice the speed of sound. Regular flights began in 1976. The plane travels from London to New York in 3 hours and 20 minutes.
When designing this machine, many problems had to be solved. For example, the complex bend of a delta wing
It was designed to generate lift at low speeds and to have low drag at high speeds. By the end of the 60s, when the experimental machines were already taking off, quarrels began about the cost of the Concorde, its
viability and environmental impact. The noise effect during the transition of the sound barrier did not allow flying at maximum speed. At low speed, the aircraft were not economically viable: at a speed of 800 km per hour, the aircraft consumed 8 times more fuel than conventional airliners. In total, only 14 Concorde aircraft were built. 1
A ceramic motor and a plastic body are far from the only new signs of a car of the near future. Is it possible to imagine the world without metal and plastics? Before the scientific and technological revolution, it was impossible to imagine such a world. Now, at the Kete Ceramics plant in the city of Kagoshima, on the island of Kyushu, a future is being created in which, as the company's engineers say, there is no need for either metal or plastics. The motor of the car of tomorrow is made of ceramic. Now there are motors that can withstand temperatures up to 700-800 degrees, and they need water and air cooling, and the heat of 1200 degrees is not dangerous for a ceramic motor. 2
1 Encyclopedia "When, where, how and why it happened" p. 369
2 Collection "Forest for Trees" p. 18
In the field of chemistry
There is no area where the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution would not be used. In the 1920s and 1930s, many items began to be made from plastic, such as slide viewers, powder boxes, hairpins, and hairpins. Polyethylene
film is used in construction.
Plastic is an example of the use of synthetics instead of natural raw materials. Lightweight, moldable, strong, stable
resistance to chemicals and high temperature, good insulating material, it is used for the production of various
products: from paints and adhesives to plastic packaging materials. In 1907, the first plastic, Bakelite, was created in America by Leo Baekeland. At first it was produced on the basis of natural raw materials: celluloid was made from cellulose. Bakelite was obtained in the laboratory as a result of the synthesis of phenol-formaldehyde resin, which, when heated under pressure, formed a solid mass. Then came polymers, which were made from larger molecules. In 1935, nylon was created, which is not subject to decay or bacteria. 1
computer revolution
An important component of the development of science and technology in the period under review was the "computer revolution". The first electronic computers (computers) were created in the early 40s. Work on them was carried out in parallel by German, American, British specialists, the greatest successes were
1 Encyclopedia "When, where, how and why it happened" p. 368
achieved in the USA. The first computers occupied an entire room, and it took considerable time to set them up. The first computers used vacuum tubes. Machines performed calculations and performed logical operations. The British computer "Colossus", made in the 40s in England and the USA, helped decipher the code of the German Enigma cipher machine during
time of World War II.
In the early 70s. microprocessors appeared, and after
them - personal computers. It was already a real revolution. The functions of computers have also expanded, which
are no longer used only for processing and storing information, but also for sharing it, designing, teaching, etc. At present, the European Organization for Nuclear Research uses a supercomputer, a giant computer with a memory of 8 million bits and 128 million words, to store and process information. In the 90s. global computer networks began to be created, which received an unusually rapid spread. Thus, in 1993 over 2 million computers were connected to the Internet in 60 countries. and a year later, the number of users of this network reached 25 million people.
TV era
Second half of the twentieth century. often referred to as the "age of television". It was invented before World War II. In 1897, the German physicist Karl Braun invented cathode ray tubes. This was the impetus for the emergence of a means of transmitting visible images using radio waves. However, the Russian scientist Boris Rosing discovered in 1907 that light transmitted through a tube to a screen could be used to produce a picture. In 1908, Scottish electrical engineer Campbell Swinton proposed the use of a cathode ray tube for both image acquisition and transmission.
The honor of the first public demonstration of the possibilities
television belongs to another Scot - John Loggia Baird. He worked on a mechanical scanning system and in 1927 successfully demonstrated it to members of the Royal
institute. Baird transmitted the first television images using BBC transmitters in 1929, and his television receivers appeared on the market a year later. 1
France, Russia and the Netherlands began television broadcasting in the 1930s, but it was more experimental than regular. America was lagging behind for two reasons: firstly, there were disputes over the patent, and secondly, they were waiting for the right moment to start transmissions. The war suspended the development of a new type of technology. But since the 1950s Television has become part of everyday life. Currently, in developed countries, television sets are available in 98% of homes.
Space exploration
In the second half of the 20th century, human space exploration began. The leadership in this industry belonged to Soviet scientists and designers headed by S.P. Korolev. In 1961, the flight of the first cosmonaut Yu. A. Gagarin took place. In 1969, American astronauts N. Armstrong and E. Aldrin landed on the moon. Since the 1970s, Soviet orbital stations have been operating in space. By the beginning of the 1980s, the USSR and the USA had launched more than 2,000 artificial satellites, put their own satellites into orbit
1 Encyclopedia "When, where, how and why it happened" p.388
also India, China, Japan. 1
The conquest of space has revolutionized the world
communication systems. These devices are used to transmit radio and
television signals, observation of the earth's surface, weather,
spy, discover pollution areas and mineral resources. In order to evaluate the significance of the
events, it is necessary to imagine that there are achievements behind them
many other sciences - aeronautics, astrophysics, atomic physics, quantum electronics, biology, medicine, etc.
Previously, satellites were used only for scientific research, but other areas of their application were soon found. The first commercial communications satellite, Telstar, transmitted a television picture from America to Europe in July 1962. Today, satellites are in orbit 36,000 km above the Earth's surface. 2
3. Problems of scientific and technological revolution
Technological progress in the second half of the XX century. had not only positive aspects, it generated a significant number of problems. One of them was. that “a machine replaces a person” (already at the beginning of the introduction of computers, it was estimated that one computer replaces the labor of 35 people). But what about those who lost their jobs because they were replaced by a car? How to treat the opinion that a machine can teach everything better than a teacher, what about us successfully completes human communication? Why have friends when you can play with the computer? These are questions that people of different ages and occupations are arguing about to this day. Behind them are real contradictions in the spheres of social relations,
culture, spiritual life, emerging information society.
A number of serious global problems are connected with the consequences of scientific and technical progress for ecology and the human environment. Already in the 60s and 70s. it became clear that nature, resources
of our planet are not an inexhaustible pantry, and reckless technocratism leads to irreversible environmental losses and catastrophes. One of the tragic events that showed the danger of technological failures of modern technology was an accident at
Chernobyl nuclear power plant (April 1986), as a result of which millions of people turned out to be outside of radioactive contamination. The problems of preserving forests and fertile lands, purity of water and air are relevant today on all continents of the Earth.
III Final part
In my report, I touched on only some of the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution. Among them: in the field of atomic physics - the use of atomic energy, in medicine - the discovery of the structure of DNA, in the automotive industry - the use of new materials, in the field of chemistry - the creation and use of plastics, in addition, the creation of television, computers and achievements in the space industry. It is simply impossible to tell about everyone.
For us, NTR is a familiar part of everyday life. We cannot imagine our life without cars, various household appliances. In the modern world, people are accustomed to the fact that improved types of technology, new materials, new research methods appear almost daily. The population of the planet also feels all the negative aspects of the scientific and technological revolution. But the scientific and technological revolution is, first of all, high productivity, profitability, competitiveness, these factors are the main driving force of progress, which ultimately leads our society to a higher standard of living.
Scientific and technical translation
Currently, the theory of technical translation as an independent scientific discipline, and with it the practice of translation, is largely transformed into a broader, global discipline - the theory of intercultural communication. as a special type of speech activity, it is one of the main and generally accepted means of intercultural communication, since very often it is the translator who becomes an intermediary in the exchange of scientific information. One of the most important realities of translation is the situation of the relativity of the result of the translation process, the solution of the problem of equivalence in relation to each specific text. There are several views on this problem. Thus, the concept of formal correspondence [L.K.Latyshev:11.] is formulated as follows: everything that can be expressed verbally is transmitted. Untranslatable and difficult to translate elements are transformed, only those elements of the source text that cannot be conveyed at all are omitted. The authors of the concept of normative content compliance argue that the translator must follow two requirements: to convey all the essential elements of the content of the source text and to comply with the norms of the target language. In this case, equivalence is interpreted as an equilibrium ratio of the completeness of information transfer and the norms of the target language. The authors of the concept of adequate (full-fledged) translation consider translation and accurate retelling of the text to be completely different activities. They believe that when translating one should strive for an exhaustive transfer of the semantic content of the text, and to ensure that the process of transmitting information takes place by the same (equivalent) means as in the original text. In relation to the practice of translating scientific texts, the concept of equivalence is relevant and quite understandable and is most likely based on the concept of L.K. Latyshev, who considers in his work the specifics of translating texts of various styles. The most difficult problem associated with the translation of scientific texts is the problem of transferring the original content using a different terminological system. We believe that the terminological system of the target language is fundamentally unique, as well as the lexical system as a whole. This is due to the following reasons: the term system is part of the lexical system of the national language, therefore, it reflects to some extent its national and cultural specificity. the terminological system reflects the subject-conceptual area of knowledge in a particular disciplinary area, which may also differ in different cultures; the terminological system is always dynamic, it is constantly changing both in systemic relations between units and in relation to the content plan of a separate terminological unit. These factors often lead to the fact that the terms are considered as non-equivalent or partially equivalent units. The concept of non-equivalence at the lexical level is considered and described, its causes are: 1) the absence of an object or phenomenon in the life of the people; 2) the absence of an identical concept; 3) difference in lexical and stylistic characteristics. With regard to terminology, the first two reasons are the most frequent, in particular the absence of an identical concept. As an example, we can cite attempts to compare Russian and English legal terminology, which revealed a fundamental discrepancy between the lexical meanings of functionally identical and often similar in sound terms, which is explained by the fundamentally different structure of the legal system itself in Russia, Great Britain and the United States. We can identify the same fundamental differences in almost any humanitarian science that studies and describes society, the realities of its life and, as a result, is inextricably linked with the national and cultural specifics of these realities. Meanwhile, most terminological units are created on the basis of international vocabulary and international morphemes, and because of this, the illusion of terminological identity can often arise, which in fact does not exist, or an attempt to recreate the semantic structure of a term based on the meaning of its constituent morphemes. Such situations often lead to inaccuracies or even serious translation errors. From the foregoing, there is an urgent need for comparative studies of terminological systems, both in terms of the semantic description of their meanings, and in terms of studying the methods of nomination that are productive in one or another knowledge system, as well as the need to develop methods for translating non-equivalent terms. In translation practice, transliteration and transcription are often used to translate many terminological units. This method of translation can be regarded as acceptable, provided that an explanatory translation follows, i.e. definition of this concept. At the same time, it should be mentioned that this method, on the one hand, leads to the internationalization of terminological systems, on the other hand, the consequence of this technique may be unreasonable borrowing, which leads to shifts in the terminological system as a whole. Therefore, it is necessary to develop specific translation procedures in the transfer of terminological units of another language. Conclusions: Communication in the field of science is one of the most important areas of information exchange in the world community in connection with scientific and technological progress. Unlike other areas of communication, written communication is of the utmost importance. When implementing written communication, the grammatical and stylistic features of scientific and technical texts are determined by the goals of communication, on the basis of which the strategies used by the authors when writing scientific and technical texts are developed: the strategy of completeness, the strategy of generalization, the strategy of abstractization, the strategy of objectivity, the strategy of politeness, the strategy of irony, the strategy of social prestige. The most important reasons that impede communication processes in the scientific field are linguistic problems - language and speech. Thus, the problem of translating scientific and technical literature as a tool for intercultural communication is of paramount importance. treminosystems of the target language. The difference between the term systems of FL and TL is the cause of the greatest difficulties. This implies the need to study treminosystems and develop methods for translating partially equivalent and non-equivalent vocabulary.
NOU VPO "Institute of Management"
Yaroslavl branch
Test
By discipline: Natural science
Topic: The impact of the scientific and technological revolution on the life of society and the worldview of people
Teacher: A.S. dunaev
Is done by a student:
1st year student, 11 SW-1 group A.V. Rumyantsev
№ record book 4725
Yaroslavl
2011
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...3
CHAPTER I…………………………………………………………………………4- 11
1. The beginnings of science and technology originated in antiquity,…………………………………………………………………………..4
2. The concept of “technology”………………………………………………………………..4
3. The definition of "scientific and technological revolution"……………………..5
4. Prerequisites for scientific and technological revolution……………………………………………………………...5
5. The beginning of the atomic era……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
6. Strengthening the direct link between scientific and technical developments………………………………………………..7
7. Discovery in biology…………………………………………………………. 7
8. The impact of scientific and technological revolution on medicine……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
9. The era of mass consumption………………………………………...8
10. New equipment and technology require a new employee………..9
11. Space exploration……………………………………………………… 10
12. New technologies…………………………………………………...10
CHAPTER II……………………………………………………………...11-14
1. Atomic energy is not only cheap electricity, but also a deadly weapon………………………........................... .........eleven
2. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant…………………………………….12
3. Man began to consume more and more natural resources………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………13
4. Man is the king of nature……………………………………………...13
5. The development of technology sometimes gives rise to a situation of absurdity…………14
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………….15-16
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE…………………………17
INTRODUCTION
I want to justify my choice of topic by the fact that:
Firstly, the topic of the scientific and technological revolution is very relevant in our time. Science does not stand still, it is constantly evolving, and together with science we (people) are developing. I'm interested in what will happen next, what we will come to, and I want to find the beginning of my answer in understanding the topic of the scientific and technological revolution. And since my profession is related to technology, it is very interesting for me to follow its development and new trends, especially in mechanical engineering.
Secondly, I chose this topic because I am interested in improving not only the economy, but also in improving people's lives. I believe that the scientific and technological revolution has greatly influenced the improvement of people's lives. Take even the most basic household appliances, computers, and the media as an example. Indeed, how a person's life improves! He began to spend much less physical strength, everything has become automated, which means that a person has more time to do his favorite thing (hobby).
Thirdly, the interest in the topic of the scientific and technological revolution is connected with the fact that it is interesting to observe the “fruits” of these discoveries and inventions. How they change the world and people. Analyze the positives and negatives.
And since scientific and technological progress is accelerating its pace, we can only assume and guess what awaits us not so in the distant future. After analyzing all the above factors, I have no doubt in my choice.
CHAPTERI
1) We live in an era of scientific and technological revolution. This concept emphasizes the great importance of science and technology in our lives. But it was not always so. The beginnings of science and technology originated in antiquity, but they developed separately from each other. The ancient Greeks, for example, having created one of the best cultures, tried to know nature, but all the hard work they did was done by slaves, and not by machines created on the basis of scientific progress. Only in modern times "man's relationship to nature is transformed from a contemplative into a practical" Now they were not interested in nature as it is, but asked questions, what can be done with it? “Natural science has become a technique, to be more precise; it united with technology into a single whole ”(W. Heisenberg).
2) Technology is a set of efforts aimed at coping with nature, as well as with the anthropogenic transformed environment. Technique is not just machines, but a systematic, orderly approach to objects using mathematical apparatus and various experimental procedures. Today we realized that a person could not become a thinker if he was not, at the same time, a doer.
Man made tools, but tools made man. The close connection between science and technology is reflected in the very term "scientific and technological revolution - STD".
As B. Russell noted, "Technology comes from science, and the latter is guided by technology." This connection between science and technology led in the middle of the 20th century to the creation of a qualitatively new system that gave rise to a fundamentally new situation on our entire planet.
3) Modern science has two main functions: cognitive and practical. The cognitive function allows you to satisfy the needs for knowledge of the existing connections of the surrounding world. Science turns into a direct productive force, is closely intertwined with technology and production (that is why it is called the scientific and technological revolution), and this changes the whole face of social production, the conditions, nature and content of labor, the structure of production forces, and has an impact on all aspects of life.
4) In the preparation of scientific and technical progress, which was a natural consequence of the scientific and technological progress of recent centuries, the discovery of the complex structure of the atom, the phenomenon of radioactivity, the creation of the theory of relativity of quantum mechanics, genetics 1, cybernetics 2, the widespread use of electricity, the splitting of the atomic nucleus, the creation of reactive technology were of great importance , mechanization and automation of production. Much of what is now usual for us - a car, an airplane, radio, television, all this is a product of scientific and technological progress, which prepared the modern scientific and technological revolution in the first half of the 20th century. The achievements of the scientific and technological revolution are impressive. It brought man into space, gave him a new source of energy - atomic energy, fundamentally new substances and technical means (laser), new means of mass communication 3 and information, etc., etc.
5) Fundamental research is at the forefront of science. The attention of the authorities to them increased sharply after Albert Einstein informed US President Roosevelt in 1939 that physicists had discovered a new source of energy that would allow creating hitherto unseen weapons of mass destruction. The German physicists O. Hahn and F. Strassmann also worked on the process of fission of the uranium nucleus. And it is not known how the history of mankind would have developed if the atomic bomb had appeared in Nazi Germany at the beginning of the Second World War and what the consequences would have been. The Second World War was already the most destructive in the history of mankind and claimed, according to various estimates, from 55 to 75 million people.
In the USSR, work on atomic weapons began in 1943 in connection with fears that Nazi Germany was creating such weapons. After the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, it became obvious that the presence of a monopoly on atomic weapons in one state - the United States - is a factor threatening peace and international stability. The Soviet Union in the second half of the 1940s made unprecedented efforts to create its own atomic bomb. The contribution of Russian scientists to solving the problems of atomic physics turned out to be quite significant. It is no coincidence that the USSR became a "pioneer" in the development of the "peaceful atom" (the world's first nuclear power plant was launched in 1954 in the city of Obninsk).
Research into the creation of atomic reactors and the atomic bomb for the first time forced the capitalist states to organize coordinated interaction between science and industry within the framework of a major national scientific and technical project. This served as a school for subsequent nationwide scientific and technical research programs. But, perhaps, the psychological effect of the use of atomic energy was even more important - mankind was convinced of the colossal transformative possibilities of science and its practical application. A sharp increase in allocations for science and the number of research institutions began. Scientific activity has become a mass profession. In the 2nd half of the 50s. Under the influence of the successes of the USSR in the study of outer space and the Soviet experience in the organization and planning of science in most countries, the creation of national bodies for planning and managing scientific activities began.
6) Direct ties between scientific and technical developments have intensified, and the use of scientific achievements in production has accelerated. In the 50s. electronic computers (computers) are created and are widely used in scientific research, production, and then management, which have become a symbol of scientific and technological revolution. Their appearance marks the beginning of the gradual transfer of human logical functions to the machine, and in the future - the transition to integrated automation of production and management. The computer is a fundamentally new type of technology that changes the position and role of man in the production process.
In the 40-50s. under the influence of major scientific and technical discoveries, fundamental shifts are taking place in the structure of most sciences and scientific activities; the interaction of science with technology and production is growing. So, in the 40-50s. a person enters the period of NTR.
7) The 20th century as a whole and its second half, which characterizes the scientific and technological revolution, brought tremendous achievements in the field of molecular biology. If in the first half of the 20th century progress in the field of the study of macromolecules was still relatively slow, then in the second half of the 20th century, i.e., in the era of scientific and technological revolution, these studies accelerated significantly, thanks to the technique of physical methods of analysis. The discovery of the structure of DNA 4 in the middle of the 20th century (1953 by the American biochemist James Watson and the English physicist F. Crick) was the beginning of intensive research in chemistry and biology.
It was found that nucleic acids, which are the carrier and transmitter of hereditary qualities and play a major role in the synthesis of cellular proteins, form a group of substances, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated. By the beginning of the 1960s, biologists had already developed a clear understanding of the basic processes of information transfer in the cell during protein synthesis.
8) In the 40s and 50s, there was an active invention of new drugs (for example, among them a class of antibiotic drugs), which was the success of a whole spectrum of sciences, from biology to chemistry. Around the same time, new ways of industrial production of vaccines and drugs were proposed, making many drugs cheap and available. Thanks to these successes of scientific and technological revolution in the field of medicine, such terrible diseases as tetanus, poliomyelitis and anthrax have receded, and the incidence of tuberculosis and leprosy has significantly decreased.
After the Second World War, in many countries of Asia and Africa, the young independent states began to introduce medical care. Massive cheap vaccinations and the introduction of elementary hygiene rules led to a sharp increase in life expectancy and a reduction in mortality.
9) As a result of the scientific and technological revolution, according to experts, in the United States up to 68% growth in GNP 5 .
in 1945-1970 due to labor productivity and only 32% increase in labor costs. The consequence of this was an increase in the rate of economic growth. Largely due to this factor, the West was able to build the so-called welfare state, when, while maintaining democratic rights and freedoms and a market economy, citizens are guaranteed a certain level of social security and welfare. In many capitalist countries of the world, this led to an increase in the role of the state, which, according to the opinion that was formed in society after the war, should take care of its citizens in need. Large-scale anti-poverty campaigns, the construction of cheap housing, unemployment benefits were a heavy burden on the state budget, but it was thanks to them that the quality of life of ordinary citizens noticeably improved. Scientific and technological revolution has led the developed countries to the era of mass consumption.
10) The concept of "scientific and technological revolution" includes a revolution in the training of personnel throughout the education system. New equipment and technology require a new worker - more cultured and educated, flexibly adapting to technical innovations, highly disciplined, who also has the skills of collective work, which is a characteristic feature of new technical systems.
The requirements for the level of education, qualifications and organization of workers have sharply increased. This is evidenced by the following facts: the number of scientists in the world doubles every 10-15 years and by the year 2000 will reach 10 million people; 70 million students are currently enrolled in universities. The information dynamism of today's world has led to the regular obsolescence of knowledge, which has given rise to a new educational concept known as lifelong learning. Also, a trend in the field of education is its humanization 6 . This is largely due to the replacement of man by machine in the monotonous process of industrial production and its reorientation to more creative activities.
11) In the middle of the twentieth century, space exploration begins. In 1957 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the first artificial satellite of the Earth rose, and in 1961. The first human flight into space took place, it lasted 1 hour 48 minutes. This marks the beginning of the era of astronautics.
12) An important characteristic of the scientific and technological revolution stage was new technologies that did not exist in the middle of the 20th century. These include laser technology, biotechnology, microelectronics, the creation of "artificial intelligence", fiber-optic communication 7 , genetic engineering, space exploration, etc. ) and the Worldwide System of Public Electronic Networks (“Internet”). As a result, a person, firstly, gained access to information volumes much larger than ever before; and secondly, a new way of communication has appeared, which can be called horizontal. Before its advent, communication and dissemination of information was mostly vertical. The author publishes a book - readers read, something is broadcast on radio and television - people listen to it or watch it. Feedback was previously almost non-existent, although the need for it was very great.
The Internet ensures the dissemination of information for a practically unlimited range of consumers, and they can communicate with each other without any difficulty. Thus, the scientific and technological revolution entailed the restructuring of the entire technical basis, the technological method of production. At the same time, it caused serious changes in the world outlook. The latter was embodied in fundamentally new, synergistic ideas about objective reality. At the present stage of cognition of the material world, an extremely important role is played by the paradigm of self-organization, which serves as the natural scientific basis for the philosophical category of development.
The 20th century is due to many discoveries and inventions that qualitatively improved the life and life of a person, changed his worldview, space exploration began, average life expectancy increased, etc. But along with the scientific and technological revolution came new problems and negative consequences.
1) The development of science, the study of atomic energy gave people not only cheap electricity, but also a deadly weapon in the form of an atomic bomb. For the first time, people experienced the full destructive power of this weapon. August 6, 1945 it was dropped on the inhabitants of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, 140 thousand people died, and on August 9, on the city of Nagasaki, 75 thousand people died.
After the end of the Second World War, the whole world was divided into two hostile camps: the socialist at the head (USSR) and the capitalist at the head (USA). The confrontation between the two forces begins with the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction, the so-called "arms race". The best scientists on the planet are working to create an even deadlier weapon capable of destroying the entire world. This is how nuclear, neutron, hydrogen, weapons appear. New types of chemical and bacteriological weapons are being developed. The threat of unleashing the third World War hangs. In mid-1995, there were about 25,000 nuclear warheads on the territory of the United States and the former USSR. True, after the collapse of the social. camp and the USSR, including long and repeated negotiations, the threat of nuclear war dropped to its lowest point in the last 50 years.
2) April 26, 1986 there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Cesium, strontium, plutonium escaped to freedom - radioactive elements that cannot be neutralized by any means. Carried by wind and rain, they covered an area of more than 100 thousand square meters. kilometers with a population of at least 800 thousand people. The consequences of this accident are still felt today. So this is just one of the environmental disasters. And they happen all the time, though on a smaller scale.
3) With the advent of scientific and technological revolution, man began to consume more and more natural resources. Forests began to be intensively cut down, which leads to the destruction of the animal world. Man displaces animals from their habitats, more and more of them get into the "red book". The extraction of oil, natural gas, iron ore, coal is increasing, which leads to the depletion of natural resources on earth. So, when oil is extracted, leaks occur that have a detrimental effect on flora and fauna, and because of the voids that form during production, the earth's crust moves, as a result of which earthquakes occur.
Every year more and more vehicles appear on our roads, which pollute our air, there is smog over large cities in the morning. Factories, metallurgical and chemical plants also cause enormous damage to the environment.
4) Man is the king of nature. This "wise" saying led to the drying of the Aral Sea and the onset of deserts. In 1950-2000 humanity will lose 1/5 of the fertile layer of the earth. The onset of the desert has led to the emergence of millions of environmental refugees, and in total 1 billion people have suffered from this process.
But the causes of man-made disasters are not only in the inept management of nature. In Japan, 100 people have been killed by robots in 10 years. In 1984, in France, a computer installed on the dam of a reservoir in the Tari Valley arbitrarily gave the command to open the floodgates. The reservoir released 2.5 million cubic meters of water, causing considerable damage to the inhabitants of the valley.
In December 1985, a disaster occurred in the Indian city of Bhopal, which, in terms of the number of direct deaths, is considered the largest in industrial history. As a result of a technical failure, a harmful chemical was released into the air from the plant's tanks, causing suffocation and loss of vision. In just 3 days after the disaster, 2,000 people died of asphyxiation.
The cause of these disasters was the man-made habitat. Machines, due to their complexity, cannot help breaking down. It would seem that these are isolated cases, but a failure in the AT&T computer network in 1990, when millions of people heard a busy signal on the handset, showed that machines can go crazy all over the world at once. According to experts, more people die in man-made disasters and accidents than in all natural disasters combined.
5) The development of technology sometimes gives rise to a situation of absurdity. So, for example, the rapid development of communication networks (telephone, radiotelephone, computer networks) is ahead of the possibility of their significant and responsible filling. Many technical innovations (inventions, design developments) are sometimes ahead of their time and become economically unprofitable. The massive number of technical devices, their introduction into production and everyday life are ahead of the intellectual and especially moral level of mass consciousness. There is a need to include in the technical systems of what the British call fool proof (protection from a fool). The clogging of the entire stream of life with technology multiplies catastrophes, accidents, tragic incidents.
CONCLUSION
Man's first step in becoming himself was his transition from an arboreal to a terrestrial way of life. The first stick in the hands of an anthropoid allowed him to gain additional opportunities, and primitive stone tools have already marked the beginning of man's dominance over nature. A person becomes an active being that does not obey the surrounding world, but transforms it. Mastery of fire made it possible to disperse darkness, defeat hunger, destroy fear of darkness, and improve nutrition. Friedrich Engels wrote: "Labor created man himself." From primitive eoliths, we have come to computers and spacecraft. In the context of weakening confrontation in the world, it is possible to exclude the development of new types of weapons, to solve global problems - the global environmental crisis, famine, epidemics, illiteracy, etc. Scientific and technological revolution allows you to eliminate the threat of an ecological catastrophe, use the energy of the sun, water, wind, and the depths of the Earth. Our life and the life of the planet are in our hands. Progress gives humanity opportunities that open up new aspects of the world for us. There is no other such creature on our planet: weak by nature, unreasonably destroying its habitat, but spreading everywhere, making nature dependent on itself, reaching heights in the struggle for survival, using ever new forces for its own purposes.
Science and technology have become the driving forces of civilization. Without them it is impossible to imagine the further development of mankind. A turn to a new form of progress is expected. Without everything we have achieved, we cannot become better. I think that this form of progress will strive for wastelessness, a minimum of resource consumption, the problems of man and machines, the intense rhythm of life and self-destruction in the technology environment will disappear. I hope that technical developments that are dangerous for humans will remain in the past, that humans will not become locked in innovations that replace communication, and that science will not produce what will become the Apocalypse for all of us. A new humane system is needed, which will use the wealth of the scientific and technological revolution for the benefit of all and will not allow the appropriation of its fruits by only a part of society. Perhaps it is worthwhile now to strive for a unified administration under the rule of a gigantic institution of power, which will not allow either the concentration of government in someone's hands, or the discrediting of any part of the population, or the predatory expenditure of resources, or the appropriation of funds. Perhaps people will never change, because there is already a chance to leave prejudices and problems behind, but science will lead them to new and new horizons of development, and it will be impossible not to take steps away from animals and on the path to knowledge and control of the entire universe .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. A.A. Gorelov Concepts of Modern Natural Science. Moscow 1997
2. A.A. Gorelov Concepts of Modern Natural Science. Moscow 2000
3. V.M. Naidyshev Concepts of Modern Natural Science. Moscow 2002
4. G.I. Ruzavin Concepts of Modern Natural Science. Moscow 2001
5. V.N., Lavrinenko, V.P. Ratnikov Concepts of Modern Natural Science. Moscow 2001
6. V.S. Stepin, V.G. Gorokhov, M.N. Rozov Philosophy of Science and Technology: Moscow, 1995
7. V.Sh. Shapovolov Fundamentals of Philosophy. From classic to modern. Moscow 1998
1 Genetics (from the Greek. génesis - origin) - the science of the laws of heredity and variability of organisms. The most important task of genetics is the development of methods for controlling heredity and hereditary variability in order to obtain the forms of organisms that a person needs or to control their individual development.
2 Cybernetics (from the Greek kybernetike - the art of management, from kybernáo - I drive, manage), the science of management, communication and information processing.
3 Mass communicationmass communication) - the systematic dissemination of messages (through print, radio, television, cinema, sound recording, video recording) among numerically large, dispersed audiences with the aim of asserting the spiritual values of a given society and exerting an ideological, political, economic or organizational impact on people's assessments, opinions and behavior.
4 Deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA), present in every organism and in every living cell, mainly in its nucleus, nucleic acid,
5Gross National product (GNP) is the total volume of final goods and services produced during the year, expressed in money.
6 Humanization- strengthening of philanthropy, justice in economic, public life; recognition and respect for universal values, attention to people.
Not exhausted life constituting it of people. Society... character impact man and technology on nature,... worldview. post-industrial society, or "information society" based on scientifically-technical revolution, on ...
Philosophy Cheat Sheet: Answers on exam tickets
Cheat sheet >> PhilosophyOrder in society creates a legal outlook of people, which is not ... rationalism developed under the direct impact scientifically-technical revolution and the transition of a number of countries ... ; - orients the personality on improvement of public life, orders, morals, ...
Sociology as the science of society (3)
Independent work >> SociologyPhilosophical premises and is based on certain outlook in which the leading role... life societies, their interconnections and interdependencies are revealed (for example, impact contemporary scientifically-technical revolution on social structure societies, ...
Society as an integral system concept, content, functions
Abstract >> Sociology... : scientifically-technical revolution, technological revolution, information, computer, telecommunications, etc. The point is not in terms, but in the essence of the process taking place in society ...
The unprecedented acceleration of scientific and technological progress (hereinafter - STP), which led to the scientific and technological revolution (hereinafter - STR), began in the world in the 50s. 20th century Scientific and technological revolution brought to life a qualitative transformation of the productive forces, sharply increased the internationalization of economic life. Fundamental changes in production were accompanied by shifts in world population. The main features of these shifts are: accelerated growth in the population, which has received the name of a population explosion, widespread, urbanization, changes in the structure of employment, and the development of ethnic processes.
Scientific and technological revolution represents a radical qualitative transformation of the productive forces, the transformation of science into a productive force and, accordingly, a revolutionary change in the material and technical basis of social production, its content, form, nature of labor, the structure of productive forces, and the social division of labor.
There are four main areas of scientific and technological revolution, reflecting the transformations: 1) in the energy base of society, 2) in the means of labor, 3) in the objects of labor, 4) in production technology. Each of them combines evolutionary and revolutionary paths of development, but the latter is of decisive importance.
Shifts in the macro-sectoral structure reflect changes in the largest economic proportions. Three of them are the most important and most clearly expressed. The first major shift is to increase the share of industry as the most advanced and dynamic part of material production. At the end of the twentieth century. about 1/5 of the economically active population of the world was employed in industry. This direction of structural shifts, especially in view of the industrialization of the developing countries that has begun, will be decisive for a long time to come. The second major shift in the macro-industry structure is the increase in the share of the non-productive sector. It is explained, on the one hand, by a sharp increase in labor productivity in the branches of material production, and, on the other hand, by the growing importance of the non-productive sphere. The third major shift finds expression in the declining share of agriculture. It is a consequence of the constantly growing technical equipment of this industry, its merging with industry and the gradual transition to the machine stage of production. To the greatest extent, the decline in the share of agriculture is typical for developed countries.
The share of construction, transport and communications, trade and finance, as a whole, remains more stable.
Shifts in the intersectoral structure reflect changes in the proportions within industry, agriculture, transport, and the non-productive sphere. They also share some common trends. The influence of scientific and technological revolution on the sectoral structure of industry was manifested primarily in the change in the ratio between the manufacturing and extractive industries. The decrease in the share of extractive industries is explained both by a general decrease in the specific energy and material consumption of production, and by the replacement of natural raw materials with artificial ones. From the second half of the 1980s. by the end of the twentieth century. the share of extractive industries in the gross industrial output of developed countries fell to 4%, and in Japan - even to 0.5%. At the same time, however, we must not forget that such a decrease could only be achieved through reliance on the fuel and raw materials resources of developing countries, in the industrial structure of which the extractive industries account for an average of 25%.
An even more important shift in the sectoral structure of industry found expression in a noticeable increase in the share of industries that form the basis of modern scientific and technological progress. Typically, these include mechanical engineering, the chemical industry and the electric power industry. The reasons for the accelerated development of this "avant-garde trio" are quite understandable. With mechanical engineering, in which all over the world at the end of the twentieth century. about 60 million people were employed, the revolutionary upheaval in the means of labor and technology is directly related, with the chemical industry - in the objects of labor, with the electric power industry - transformations in the energy base. In addition, they all determine the production and use of a wide range of consumer goods. In the late 1980s the branches of the "vanguard three" accounted for 35-50% in Europe, in other developed countries - 45-55% of gross industrial production.
The impact of scientific and technological revolution on the sectoral structure of agriculture is most clearly manifested in an increase in the share of animal husbandry, on the sectoral structure of transport - in an increase in the share of automobile, pipeline and air transport, foreign trade - in an increase in the share of finished products. Of course, in different groups of countries, and even more so in individual countries, these general trends may manifest themselves to different degrees.
Of particular importance in the era of scientific and technological revolution are shifts in the micro-industry structure. After reaching certain proportions between the spheres of production, between large complex industries, they become relatively stable, while the main changes move to the area of microstructure, affecting primarily individual sub-sectors and types of production. First of all, this applies to the most complex and diversified industries - mechanical engineering and the chemical industry.
In the structure of mechanical engineering, under the influence of scientific and technological revolution, a fairly large group of industries has moved to the forefront, including the production of electronic equipment, low-voltage electrical engineering, automation equipment and devices, aerospace and nuclear technology, and some types of metalworking and chemical-technological equipment. These include the production of household electronic and electrical appliances. Along with this, the share of traditional industries and sub-sectors that produce machine tools, rolling stock, cars, ships, and agricultural machinery has decreased. In the structure of each of them, changes are also observed. Thus, tankers (up to 3/4 of the tonnage) began to sharply predominate among the ships under construction (up to 3/4 of the tonnage), which is associated with huge maritime transportation of oil cargo.
In the structure of the chemical industry, with all the importance of basic chemistry, the leading position has passed to the industry of plastics, chemical fibers, dyes, pharmaceuticals, detergents and cosmetics.
STP affects all elements of the productive forces. It leads to a change in technological systems, and shifts in them cause an increase in overall productivity. The intensification of production is carried out in the process of accumulation. STP leads to major changes in the objects of labor. Among them, a huge role is played by various types of synthetic raw materials that have desired properties that do not exist in natural materials. They require significantly less labor costs for their processing. Therefore, the current stage of scientific and technical progress relatively reduces the role of natural materials in economic development and weakens the dependence of the manufacturing industry on mineral raw materials.
Under the influence of scientific and technological progress, there have been changes in the means of labor. In the last decades of the twentieth century. they were associated with the development of microelectronics, robotics and biotechnology. The use of electronic technology in combination with machine tools and robots has led to the creation of flexible production systems in which all operations for the machining of a product are performed sequentially and continuously. Flexible production systems greatly expand the possibilities of automation. They extended the scope of its action to small-scale production, allowing the production, although of the same type, but different from each other, models that are quickly reorganized to produce a new model of products. The use of flexible production systems can significantly increase labor productivity by increasing the utilization rate of equipment and reducing the time spent on auxiliary operations.
In general, under the influence of scientific and technological revolution throughout the second half of the twentieth century. the connection between science and material production is being strengthened. At the stage of scientific and technological revolution, science becomes a direct productive force, its interaction with technology and production is sharply enhanced, and the introduction of new scientific ideas into production is qualitatively accelerated. The achievements of NTR are impressive. It brought man into space, gave him a new source of energy - atomic, fundamentally new substances (polymers) and technical means (laser), new media (Internet) and information (optical fiber), etc.
Complex branches of scientific and technical activity have arisen, in which science and production are inseparably merged: systems engineering, ergonomics, design, biotechnology.
