The article is dedicated to J. Habermas' 90th birthday and to analysis of his contribution to sociological theorizing with special focus on his conception of the modern society development. The neo-Marxist and post-Marxist phases in his intellectual career have been characterized. Habermas' integrative paradigm and his two-level theory of society are interpreted as a new perspective on goals and indicators of social development. Being presented as foundations of sociality, communicative rationality and communicative action correspond to current processes of social development, but in Habermas' theory they are used to deter social changes and to defend values and institutions of the previous centuries. from the past. Conception of the life-world defense against the system expansion is a kind of conservative utopia. Under today's virtualization and postvirtualization conditions the life-world is not conservative reality of everyday routine but augmented reality constructed by creative and mobile communications and supported by network and flow structures. In such augmented social reality, communicative action creates meanings, symbolic structures legitimating purposive-rational action and the system.