Accelerating Change

A new generation of biologists and cosmologists are coming to understand the difference between evolutionary and developmental processes in universal systems, both living and nonliving. Was the Earth's emergence of organic chemistry, DNA-guided protein synthesis, multicellular body plans, humanoid life, and technological adaptations such as language, the wheel and the digital computer (in the context of human culture) inevitable, in any meaningful sense? What global emergences can we expect given this history? Developmental futurists (those who understand the new paradigm of evolutionary development) can provide early evidence for these and a host of other convergences. They speak of both evolutionary (possible and preferable, but unpredictable) futures, and developmental (highly probable, statistically inevitable) futures, and are rapidly learning to distinguish between these two processes in discussing human futures.

I will outline what has been called the infopomorphic paradigm of evolutionary development, a way to understand ourselves and the universe in information theoretic or computational terms. We'll discuss such apparently developmental trends as the increasing matter- energy-, space-, and time- (MEST) efficiency and density of physical-computational systems over universal, biological, cultural, and technological timescales. I propose we can expect this "MEST compression" to continually surprise us with what Carver Mead has called our "unreasonably efficient" advances in the microcosm, such as the recent stunning production advance in carbon nanoribbons . Here's what may be the most important point: the very structure of our universe appears organized to drive accelerating discovery and computation in the microcosm, many orders of magnitude faster than in any other domain. Such microcosmic acceleration in turn is enabling new developments in human-machine symbiosis, including intelligent agents and interfaces, immune systems, transparency, accountabilty, and an emerging computational dimension to our social space I call the Valuecosm, which may dramatically improve the quality of human life, even as it brings new potential for misuse and abuse in its early years. As we move inexorably toward Teilhard De Chardin's Noosphere (global mind), we'll discuss the importance of understanding immunity, of learning from inevitable catastrophes, and of balancing both accelerating innovation and sustainable development in the history of human civilization. Along the way I'll try to make the case that we need a lot more research into apparent developmental trends, as they make us more accurate forecasters and change agents, and as they are uniquely testable and falsifiable propositions about our future.

Bio: John Smart has a long, generalist history of studying science and technological culture with the aim of better understanding "change and the future," his professed passion since the age of five. He has a B.S. in Business from UC Berkeley, a broad grounding in the liberal arts, and seven years of full time university coursework in biological, medical, cognitive, computer and physical science at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego.

He's now writing his first book, Destiny of Species, on the coming singularity, and doing occasional public speaking on the topic. He has run three businesses, his last for nine years as Co-founder and CEO of Hyperlearning, a 50 employee test preparation and collegiate science tutoring company, sold to The Princeton Review in 1996. He has been writing about topics in accelerating change since 1999 at his personal website, SingularityWatch.com, and is founder and president of the nonprofit Institute for Accelerating Change.