Three Visions of the Future: Smart Cities, New Humanism, and the Synergetics of the Anthropic Transition (The Summary of International Academic Forums and Conferences, Moscow, Autumn, 2025)

Abstract

The article offers a socio-philosophical review of three international conferences held in Moscow in autumn 2025, each devoted to rethinking the future of humanity, society, and civilization amid the rapid development of information technologies, artificial intelligence, and global transformations. The analysis focuses on the BRICS forum on the future of cities, Cloud Cities; the Frolov Readings, held at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences; and the Third Autumn Sretensky Conference – the Kurdyumov Readings, Worldview Foundations of a New World Order. Although these events differed in their participants – ranging from experienced policymakers and administrators to prominent philosophers and leading scientists – as well as in their thematic priorities, they were united by a shared concern with the design of the future and the search for value-based foundations for sustainable development. The article examines three distinct visions of the future. The first is associated with a technologically oriented model of the smart and environmentally responsible city. The second is developed through the philosophy of new humanism, which places at its center the preservation of the human being, human agency, anthropological integrity, and the moral foundations of culture. The third is represented by the synergetic concept of the Great Anthropic Transition, which presupposes a shift from a technocratic logic of civilizational development toward an anthropo- and bio-oriented paradigm. The article concludes that these approaches are complementary, since they all address a common key problem – the preservation of the human being as a subject of development in the face of global technological and civilizational challenges.