Subtitle: A Speculative Framework for Thinking About the Future in a World of Accelerating Change.
Part 1. (Part 2: vimeo.com/6153233 )
Slides: accelerating.org/presentations/EvoDevoUniverseBAFS2009.ppt

Abstract: One of the Really Big Questions we ask about the universe is what aspects of universal change (including technological, social and personal change) are intrinsically unpredictable and "creative", and what aspects are predictable and "destined". In biology, evolutionary systems are always creative and unpredictable, while developmental systems are statistically predictable and destined to follow hierarchical stages and a life cycle. Could our universe itself be both evolutionary and developmental? How would we tell? What is the evidence that it is involved in hierarchical emergence, and that it is likely to eventually replicate? Is accelerating change, here on Earth, part of a universal developmental process? If so, what does this imply for the future of humans and their technologies?

Science can't yet provide hard answers to these questions, but we do have early evidence to support hypotheses in these areas, and we are beginning to see how to test some of these hypotheses as well. Join us as we discuss a series of interesting and very speculative hypotheses on the meaning and implications of accelerating change. The questions you ask and the tentative answers you find may help you see both yourself and the world from a much more accurate, useful and powerful perspective.

A free public presentation at the Bay Area Future Salon in Palo Alto, CA on April 14, 2009 by systems theorist and foresight scholar John Smart of the Acceleration Studies Foundation (accelerating.org).

Use & Attribution: These videos and up to 5% of the slides from this presentation are CCSA (creative commons share alike) licensed. They may be used for noncommercial purposes with attribution.