Forthcoming Kondratieff wave, Cybernetic Revolution, and global ageing

•New technological breakthrough will start in the 2030th and merge with the sixth K-wave.•This breakthrough will start in medical technologies which will combine other technologies.•The global ageing will be an important factor for this revolution.•The sixth K-wave could be the last Kondratieff wave.

In the present article we analyze the relationships between K-waves and major technological breakthroughs in history and offer forecasts about features of the sixth Kondratieff wave. We use for our analysis the basic ideas of long cycles' theory and related theories (theories of the leading sector, technological styles etc.) as well as the ideas of our own theory of production principles and production revolutions. The latest of production revolution is the Cybernetic Revolution that, from our point of view, started in the 1950s. We assume that in the 2030s and 2040s the sixth K-wave will merge with the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (which we call a phase of self-regulating systems). This period will be characterized by the breakthrough in medical technologies which will be capable to combine many other technologies into a single system of MANBRIC-technologies (medico-additive-nano-bio-roboto-info-cognitive technologies). The article also presents a forecast of the process of global ageing and argues why the technological breakthrough will occur in health care sector and connected spheres.