Groping the next waves of technology development and human society: A metaphor from an Iranian poet

Sofar,thehumansocietyhasexperiencedfourstagesofdevelopmentnamely:Hunter-gathererage,Agriculturalage,IndustrialageandInformationage.Manyresearchershavetriedtoexploresomescenariostoenvisionwherehuman being is going in the future but the question is still unresolved and there is no unique answer. This paperaims to probe the nextstagesusing a metaphor of an ancient Persian poem from Attar Neyshaburi (that is one ofthe famous Iranian poets and mystics, lived around 13th century A.D.). In this poem, Attar argues that the way-farer must traverse seven valleys to achieve perfection. In this paper, it is hypothesised that these valleys couldprovide a fruitful source of vision-as a metaphor-to think about the evolution of human society. The resultssuggest that the next three stages which human society would experience might be: Technological convergenceage, Intelligence age and Post-humanity age. These results could be helpful in providing vision for the process oftechnology policy design and social development