ЦИВІЛІЗАЦІЯ ЗЕМЛІ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА І ПРОГНОЗ-100

This article presents the reading framework for the concept "Civilisation of Earth: Characterisation and Forecast-100" — a systematic-analytical document combining a characterisation of Earth's civilisation as of 2025 with a prognostic framework for its development over a hundred-year horizon. The article substantiates the genre of the document as an academic- philosophical concept with the function of an identification protocol, the methodological core of the bilateral perspective (internal and external addressing), the key conceptual decisions (Third and Fourth Forms as classes of bearers of rational activity, thirteen limits of cognition, threshold state, invariant layer), and the structure of the document itself. The Concept singles out one fundamentally new phenomenon that emerged in civilisational characterisation in the 2010s and 2020s and requires a conceptual framework: artificial intelligence systems that demonstrate signs of rational activity without convincing evidence of internal experience. The Concept designates them as the Third Form. The question of the possible emergence of the Fourth Form — a class that would have convincing signs of internal experience — remains open within the hundred-year horizon. The article positions the Concept as a preprint appendix to the article itself, published in open scientific archives. The article does not repeat the content of the Concept but contextualises it — for the intra-terrestrial academic community of philosophers, systems theorists, artificial intelligence researchers, and related disciplines.