The unprecedented acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies has fundamentally transformed the conditions under which humanity lives, governs, communicates, and understands itself – something this author was writing about extensively for more than two decades . Yet the principal challenge of the digital age does not lie in the increasing sophistication of algorithms, computational power, or autonomous systems. Rather, it lies in humanity’s diminishing capacity to guide technological development through reflective awareness, ethical judgment, and responsibility.
Humans, technology, and nature exist within a relationship of profound interdependence in which every technological innovation reshapes the social, ecological, cognitive, and political conditions of human existence – thus confirming the central premise of the so-called anthropotechniques[1]. Consequently, the contemporary digital crisis is ultimately not a crisis of technology, but a crisis of consciousness – as this author noted long ago, describing the “cognitive deficit crisis”[2].
Human development can therefore no longer be measured solely through economic growth, productivity, or computational capability. It must equally be evaluated through the quality of human consciousness, mental well-being, ecological sustainability, social cohesion, cross-generational contents and solidarities, as well as other formats of equity and justice, to the very preservation of life in all its forms.
The chapters collected in this volume approach these questions from different disciplinary perspectives, yet they converge on one essential conclusion: technology must remain an instrument of human development rather than becoming the measure of humanity itself. The decisive question of our age is therefore not what technology can accomplish, but what humanity is capable of becoming through its responsible use.
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More than seven centuries before the emergence of modern science, Jalal ad-Din Rumi reminded humanity that existence cannot be confined to the visible and the material, warning against the illusion that external forms alone constitute reality. Centuries later, Max Planck, whose discoveries inaugurated the quantum revolution, questioned the mechanistic worldview of classical science and argued that consciousness occupies a fundamental place in our understanding of reality. Although emerging from entirely different intellectual traditions and historical settings, Rumi, Planck and Buddhist philosophy converge in recognising that matter and consciousness cannot be understood as isolated or competing domains. To reduce one to the other—or to imagine that technology may ultimately substitute for human consciousness—is not merely philosophically inadequate but fundamentally contrary to the relational order of nature itself.
This understanding resonates equally with the humanistic philosophy of the post-Second World War European thought, most notably in the works of Erich Fromm, who argued that the highest achievement of civilization is not the accumulation of technical power or material possessions but the realization of the human person. The essential question is therefore not what technology can produce, but what human beings are capable of becoming. Technology derives its legitimacy not from novelty, speed or efficiency, but from its capacity to deepen freedom, cultivate reflective awareness, strengthen solidarity and enable the flourishing of individuals, communities and civilizations.
AI, as well as other forms of digital (over)exposure that is (over)stimulating us, should therefore be understood as nothing else but the latest form of anthropotechnique—one of the techniques through which humanity extends, cultivates and transforms its own capacities. This author has written several books on this.
The history of civilization is, in essence, the history of anthropotechniques. Their original purpose was survival (through the mechanical solidarity of the group); their ultimate purpose is human (group and individual) self-realization. Such realization is therefore both the purpose and the criterion by which every anthropotechnique—from the first stone tool to AI—must ultimately be judged.
Throughout history, anthropotechniques have served humanity by strengthening its normative orders. Their legitimacy has never resided in technical sophistication itself, but in their contribution to the development of the human person and the advancement of civilization. Whenever technological development ceases to enhance human dignity, autonomy, wisdom, ecological responsibility and intergenerational well-being, and instead promotes dependence, alienation, domination, environmental degradation or the reduction of persons to objects of algorithmic optimisation, it fails its fundamental civilizational purpose. Technology was created to advance humanity; humanity was never created to alienate itself through technology.
At this critical civilizational juncture, humanity carries a responsibility extending far beyond the present generation. Our obligation is not merely to innovate, but to preserve the social and generational contract as well as the balance between analogue and digital, between efficient and human, between rational and empathic.
As this author have repeatedly argued in his writings, sustainable development is too often described as ‘any development that meets the entire needs of the present without compromising such needs of the future generations (deprived from hidden – societal, health or environmental costs)’, but maybe more accurate – while shorter, definition would be “any development aimed at the so-called 3Ms: the maximum good for maximum species, over maximum time-space span – comprehensive stewardship.” This principle applies with equal force to AI and to every past, current or emerging anthropotechnique. The 3Ms are therefore not merely a sustainability principle; they constitute the normative criterion by which every anthropotechnique should be evaluated. Technology fulfils its civilizational purpose only when it secures the greatest good for the greatest number of species over the longest possible time-space horizon, while preserving the social contract between contemporaries and the generational contract between present and future generations.
From this perspective, Quantum Buddhism (connecting Technology – Mind – Health; for more, see the author’s works on Geopolitics of Quantum Buddhism) may be understood as one possible ethical-philosophical orientation that restores the missing bridge between matter and spirit, capability and responsibility, science and wisdom – a merge between Newton and Rumi, between Weber and Sartre, between the vehicle and the journey, between colour and rhythm, dharma and karma. It neither rejects science nor opposes technological innovation. Rather, it reminds us that technological progress acquires meaning only when directed toward the higher and longer-lasting common good. Science expands knowledge, technology expands capability, while philosophy cultivates wisdom. A sustainable civilization requires the harmonious balance of all three. And these three require an unrestricted and fair, yet analogue, horizontal and vertical transmission.
If technology is the vehicle through which civilization advances, ethical reflection remains the compass that ensures the journey continues toward humanity rather than away from it. The journey begins with the human being, and its destination is human self-realization.
Ultimately, the future of technology will not be determined by machines but by humanity’s capacity to preserve wisdom alongside knowledge, responsibility alongside power and consciousness alongside innovation. The true measure of technological progress is therefore not whether machines become more intelligent, but whether humanity itself becomes wiser, freer, healthier, more compassionate and en route to its own self-realisation.
Technology is humanity’s greatest invention because of humanity’s unique ability to deploy the mind for abstract thinking (a feature that significantly distinguishes humans from other (intelligent) forms of life on this planet). One exists only through the other. If we inherited this world from previous generations, then—even in the best of circumstances—we inherited only half of it; the other half is borrowed from future generations, of all.
[1] As anthropotechniques, we should assume the (precognitive and) conscious clustering of different experiences, knowledges, discoveries, patents and the like; its practical application in any human activity (including all modes of horizontal and vertical transmission) aimed at acquiring resources for consumption in space and time by variety of tools and weaponry. As the only compensation for the biological and neurological limitations of humans (inferior to other forms of life on the planet), the anthropotechniques were answering the central pre-cognitive concern of humans: Survival! This is a self-coined definition based on works of prof. Kulic from late 1990 and early 2000, that ever since this author further developed and extensively used in his lectures on the ‘Institutions and Instruments of Sustainable Development’ (chapter: Environmental ethics). As such, the definition is extensive enough to describe the event of first usage of the sharp stone/broken bone by early homo faber all the evolutionary way to the development and deployment of the nuclear bomb.
[2] “…our crisis cannot be environmental, as it was never a financial or security (…) – our crisis must be a moral one”.