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Big Historical Foundations for Deep Future Speculations: Cosmic Evolution, Atechnogenesis, and Technocultural Civilization

Foundations of Science volume 22, pages 39–124 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

Big historians are attempting to construct a general holistic narrative of human origins enabling an approach to studying the emergence of complexity, the relation between evolutionary processes, and the modern context of human experience and actions. In this paper I attempt to explore the past and future of cosmic evolution within a big historical foundation characterized by physical, biological, and cultural eras of change. From this analysis I offer a model of the human future that includes an addition and/or reinterpretation of technological singularity theory with a new theory of biocultural evolution focused on the potential birth of technological life: the theory of atechnogenesis. Furthermore, I explore the potential deep futures of technological life and extrapolate towards two hypothetical versions of an ‘Omega Civilization’: expansion and compression.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Smart, Clément Vidal, John Stewart, David Weinbaum (Weaver), Viktoras Veitas, Marios Kyriazis, Claudio Flores Martinez, David Christian and all anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive feedback. I would like to thank the Global Brain Institute (GBI) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) for support and the opportunity to develop and share these ideas with the world, and in particular, to present these ideas at the International Big History Association (IBHA) 2014. I would also like to thank the authors I cited, who provided me with a wealth of data and a playground of brilliant concepts and theories, without which I would have never been able to produce this work.

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Last, C. Big Historical Foundations for Deep Future Speculations: Cosmic Evolution, Atechnogenesis, and Technocultural Civilization. Found Sci 22, 39–124 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-015-9434-y

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