Please distribute to others who may be interested... You are hereby invited to a seminar in our twelfth interdisciplinary series on Evolution, Complexity and Cognition <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108> (ECCO 2015-2016)
Time: Friday November 13 , 14h-16h Place: *D.1.07 , VUB* ------------------------------ The Big Future Clément Vidal <http://www.clemvidal.com/> (GBI, ECCO) Abstract: Modern science has unveiled much of the past 14 billion years of cosmic evolution. In the words of evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, the resulting big history narrative is “probably the best myth we will ever have”. What about the big future? What could happen the next 14 billion years? Unfortunately, the only certainty is that the universe and all life within it will ultimately die in a cosmic doom scenario, such as the heat death. We thus lack optimistic narratives where intelligent life survives in the big future. Today, we are at the edge of a major transition, where humans and technologies play a role on a planetary scale. Transhumanists call it the technological singularity, other futurists the global brain, evolutionary theorists a major evolutionary transition, big historians a major threshold, geologists the anthropocene. I start by analyzing the coming threshold, but also speculate about the many other thresholds likely to await any intelligent civilization in the universe. I thus attempt to connect the dots between the next hundred, thousand, million and billion years. For the next hundred years, I consider how the human-machine symbiosis may come about. I show that an energetic crisis is ahead even if we are greatly optimistic about technological progress. For the next thousand years, I suggest life will rely more and more on technological substrates, gradually replacing biological life. In the next million years we will be busy anticipating the predictable death of our Sun in about 1 billion year, while still growing in our energy use. Regarding the next billion years, I speculate about radical thresholds involving more substantial stellar energy harnessing mechanisms, and connect these ideas with putative extraterrestrial life forms: the stellivores. I finally argue that making a new universe may be a way out of a cosmic doom scenario. Visions about our big future hold the promise to give us hope and meaning here and now, to help us in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and to bring us insights into practical and critical choices we must make today. ------------------------------ Upcoming Seminars *Nov. 19* Martin Monperrus *Nov. 27 * Sayfan G. Borghini Stigmergy in the Design of Social Environments *Dec. 4 * Ben Goertzel, Francis Heylighen, Cadell Last, Viktoras Veitas *Workshop: Offer networks: a new paradigm for developing an intelligent sharing economy**Dec. 11 * Mark Burdick *Dec. 18 * Jos Jacobs See also the ECCO/GBI calendar <https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=azMyN252aWluM2JoMnU3MXY5OGt2ZzliOGdAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ> . You can add this calendar to your calendar application through here <https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/k327nviin3bh2u71v98kvg9b8g%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics> More info about the ECCO seminar program: http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108 -- Evo Evo Busseniers - Seminar Coordinator ECCO Group (VUB) <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/1> Email: [email protected] Website: http://vub.academia.edu/EvoBusseniers <http://be.linkedin.com/in/weaver9/>
