The concept of infranetics as an umbrella science has been developed by the author since 2016, as a result of realizing the need to bring together on one platform a specific amount of knowledge from a number of far-flung natural and applied sciences and engineering disciplines, which together allow solving inter- and transdisciplinary problems of creation and management of the second (as M. Gorky aptly puts it), man-made, artificial nature in the form of large cyber-physical and bio-socio-economic-technical infrastructures and systems, taking into account their reliability, supra resilience, risk and security. These systems necessarily include society (social infrastructure), which determines all the maximum permissible conditions for its sustainable existence in a given region/country/world. This also naturally includes agro-industrial infrastructures, since these branches of human activity, although they deal with wildlife (animal husbandry, poultry farming, fish farming and crop production), transform it to suit their needs, and have been doing this for many millennia. A conscious response to the challenge presented to science by the socially active and preoccupied part of modern society (as well as the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York) was the concept of high convergent technologies. In 2002, M. Rocko and V. Bainbridge in their report to the US National Science Foundation (NSF) proposed the concept and for the first time used the term NBIC-convergence, built on the principle of a synergistic combination of the four most rapidly developing scientific technological fields: N – nano- (science and technology), B – bio- (technology and medicine), I – information technologies, including advanced computer computing and communications, C – cognitive sciences (including neuroscience). This report, which has a Foresight character, rethinks such fundamental concepts as man, mind, life, nature. For the authors of this concept, the defining principle is the creation of a new, natural economy based on technology, which is crucial for social development and national security in the 21st century.
With a deepening understanding of the essence of NBIC-convergence, it becomes more and more clear that it will be able to improve medical therapy, expand human abilities through symbiosis with artificial intelligence, and even implement a planned human evolution project (turning it into a superman in a historical perspective (smarter, physically more healthy, possessing practical immortality, and, according to a number of futurologists, to the creation of a new race based on it ).
The advent of NBIC-convergence poses entirely new challenges to scientists, policy makers and business leaders, who for the first time are acquiring new broad and powerful tools for shaping regional markets, societies and lifestyles. These funds should allow balancing risk and benefit, threat and opportunity, social responsibility and competitive advantage, both at the level of the global community and at the levels of the region, territory and individual.
Initially, convergence was understood as such a process of rapprochement / convergence / interpenetration (fusion) of various natural and human sciences, in which the boundaries between individual technologies are erased (but their convergent relationship remains not absolute), and the final product / gadget appears at the junction of various fields of science and technology. Merging technologies is the integration of various disciplines in the process of conducting scientific and / or research activities.
Currently, there are two broad definitions of the term convergence: technological convergence and media convergence (content fusion). The first occurs when many products are combined into one synthetic product that has all the advantages of its components and, additionally, its own unique, emergent properties. Media convergence is understood as the removal of all barriers to interpenetration between information and telecommunications technologies, the Internet, cellular communications, television and consumer electronics, which leads to the (smart) Internet of things and, in general, to a single converged industry.
In parallel with the process of convergence of NBIC-technologies, an equally important synergetic analysis and forecasting of the social processes accompanying this convergence took place. Considering the impact of NBIC-technologies on the social sphere, the international community of experts came to the conclusion that it is necessary to include the fifth component in it – social and humanitarian technologies, since in the future the behavior of the world community will be determined not so much by the level of technology development, but by the ability of mankind to develop and implement a methodology harmonious coexistence and social consensus.
There are several convergent technologies currently in use around the world. For example, the American National Science Foundation (NSF) supports three such concepts:
• NBIC (Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology + Cognitive science). Some scientists believe that the future of natural sciences belongs to NBIC;
• GRAIN (Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence + Nanotechnology);
• BANG (Bits, Atoma, Neurons, Genes).
The European Union is funding the concept of convergent technologies for the European Knowledge Society. The Canadian government is funding the Canadian Foresight Pilot Project «Biosystems».
It should be noted that technological convergence is not strictly limited to four technologies. There are convergences of two and three technologies. In the latest classification of scientific disciplines, in which it is possible to defend candidate and doctoral dissertations, triplet- and quadrodisciplines have appeared. In engineering and agricultural technologies and sciences, this number can reach six or more.
To solve regional problems of risk and safety related to applied and engineering sciences, in 2016 the author proposed MAICS convergent technology. The accumulated ambiguous experience in the practical transformation of territories into smart regions, the lessons of the still unfinished (at the time of writing this preprint) cycle of the COVID’19 coronavirus pandemic show that it is necessary to include the agro-industrial complex in MAICS technology as a separate critical type of biosociotechnical infrastructure. Thus, the MAICS technology was transformed by the author into the MABICS technology by including applied biotechnology (animal husbandry (veterinary medicine) and agronomy in general) in it. The abbreviation MABICS refers to digital optimal design and stochastic Mechanics, Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, Information Technology, Cognitive Sciences, Social Sciences.
Unlike NBIC-technologies, whose authors combined the most rapidly developing technologies with great economic potential, when choosing his combination of convergent sciences, the author primarily proceeded from the need to (1) harmonize the coexistence of the oppressed first and developing second nature to ensure the stability of biodiversity and well-being noosphere; (2) to use the achievements of these rapidly developing disciplines and technologies in the creation of a smart second nature that changes adaptively with the change of the person himself and his needs; (3) to create an appropriate scientific toolkit to ensure the fulfillment of the first two goals and (4) to structure an umbrella discipline containing the main components of knowledge and technologies needed by specialists involved in the design and operation of smart cyber-physical infrastructures and systems serving modern society.