Abstract: The paper states that the civilizational foundations of socio–humanitarian criteria for evaluating technological innovations are, first of all, the value-normative systems of each individual civilization, and their modification inevitably either leads to a civilizational crisis, or is its consequence. Such crises themselves are considered not so much from the standpoint of their assessment (positive or negative), but based on ideas about their systemic nature – as a kind of an error in the functioning of the system, occurring either from its insufficient ability to adequately respond to external challenges, or from inconsistency in the pace and direction of development of its individual parts. In this article, the civilizational foundations on which the criteria for evaluating scientific and technical innovations are based on the following considerations: 1) the idea that modern civilization belongs precisely to the technogenic type, based on the works of V. S. Stepin; 2) the methodology of studying civilization as an autopoietic recursive system. According to the conclusions of the article, the modern technogenic civilization does not have the fullness of the grounds necessary for the formation of a consistent holistic system of socio-humanitarian criteria for evaluating technological innovations, however, such grounds may arise provided that the current value and world outlook crisis is overcome by eliminating the contradiction between the heuristic and teleological parts of the existing worldview.