Human Energy Podcast

On some informational aspects of our noosphere and beyond Presented by Manasvi Lingam at the N2 Conference 2023 at University of California, Berkeley. Information transmission (i.e., communication) is a striking facet of our biosphere and especially our noosphere. In this talk, I will highlight preliminary research on quantifying the global amount of information flow through the biosphere and noos...

The Third Story : self-organizing evolution as a source of meaning Presented by Francis Heylighen as part of Human Energy's 2023 N2 Conference at the University of California, Berkeley The Human Energy project intends to address the "Techno-Social Dilemma", which we define as the sense of anxiety, depression and despair in the present Information Age. That dilemma can be understood...

The Evidence for an Expanded Noosphere Presented by Kevin Kelly   as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley The Noosphere is more than a metaphor. We can treat it as a large-scale physical specimen that we can inspect and describe. The verifiable evidence for the existence of a planetary super-organism with autonomy (PSA) is in three parts: evidenc...

Large Language Models: Portals To The Noosphere Presented by Gregory Stock with Sadie Stock as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at University of California, Berkeley Recent advances in AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), may soon erode the perceived primacy of individual thought and consciousness. Our planetary superorganism continues to evolve, and a dramatic leap has now...

Connectivity and Cultural Heritage: Enabling access to humanity's rich legacy Presented by Elizabeth Lee as part of Human Energy's 2023 N2 Conference at the University of California, Berkeley This presentation will discuss CyArk's mission, its history, and its place-based philosophy. The presentation will highlight collaborations like the 'Sacred Places' exhibition with th...

A Landscape of Consciousness in the Noosphere: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications Presented by Robert Lawrence Kuhn as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley Learn more about Robert's work at Closer to Truth . In Teilhard de Chardin’s grand vision, the noosphere is an emergent entity that reflects the evolution of complexity in...

Presented by Jaron Lanier as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist, and composer of contemporary classical music. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality. Learn more at https://humanenergy.io

AGI and Collective Intelligence: Critical Synergies Presented by Ben Goertzel  as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley Learn more: https://humanenergy.io/

Can Science Alone Advance the Noosphere? Understanding Teilhard's Omega Principle Presented by Ilia Delio as part of Human Energy 's 2023 N2 Conference at the University of California, Berkeley Scientists have shown a renewed interest in Teilhard de Chardin's ideas on directed evolution. While principles of natural selection, epigenetics and complexity theory undergird direction in...

A Human Energy White Paper  Presented by Clément Vidal as part of Human Energy 's 2023 N2 Conference at the University of California, Berkeley  Human Energy is a nonprofit research, media, and educational organization dedicated to addressing the techno-social dilemma: the loss of identity, meaning, coherence and direction in our science and technology driven age. I will introduce the mission...

On Being a Noospheric Species Presented by Terrence Deacon as part of Human Energy 's 2023 N2 Conference at the University of California, Berkeley Presentation Summary: Teilhard argued that the human evolutionary process does not exhibit the pattern of diversification and specialization characteristic of biological evolution in general. Rather it has a convergent character. This has parallels...

In an earlier Science of the Noosphere conversation with John Arquilla that was focused on an article titled “Whose Story Wins: Rise of the Noosphere, Noopolitik, and Information-Age Statecraft”, we touched on the subject of the global commons. The term “global commons” comes up 153 times in the Noosphere and Noopolitik article, so we thought another conversation focused exclusively on the topic o...

There is one sense in which people conceive of the noosphere as a futuristic planetary-scale entity of some sort—a fully functional superorganism with a global brain and collective consciousness, brought into being as the Internet evolves into an increasingly powerful and capable interconnecting force. In another sense, however, we live in the noosphere now—though perhaps not fully functional as a...

Kevin Kelly is an icon of the Internet Age. He co-founded Wired Magazine in 1993, where his current title is “Senior Maverick”. In the 1980s he was publisher and editor of Whole Earth Review, which, under his direction and editorship, “was the first consumer magazine to report on virtual reality, ecological restoration, the global teenager, Internet culture, and artificial life.” Many more milesto...

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Francis Heylighen collaborated with Shima Beigi on a research paper about the noosphere’s response to the global crisis. The paper is titled Collective Consciousness Supported by the Web: Healthy or Toxic? A full text PDF of the paper can be downloaded here. Francis and Shima are both based at the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) for transdisciplinary studies at th...

As with any form of technology, artificial intelligence has the potential to greatly benefit humankind, along with the potential to do real harm. Decisions we make today regarding how we implement AI in various aspects of our lives will have consequences far into the noosphere’s future. In this conversation, David Sloan Wilson explores those potential consequences with Stuart Russell and Terrence...

In the series of conversations that contribute to our exploration of the Science of the Noosphere, there is a great deal of discussion about the formation of a global brain, with collective consciousness. Those conversations are fascinating, but mostly speculative. While there are many theories regarding how a global brain will evolve and function, and how collective consciousness may work, these...

One of Science of the Noosphere’s central goals is to update Teilhard’s vision of the Noosphere with scientific discoveries that have been made since his death in 1955. Most of that will involve new knowledge from fields such as evolutionary biology, anthropology, human history, cultural evolution, and technology. However, Brian Thomas Swimme, an evolutionary cosmologist on the graduate faculty of...

This conversation between two science fiction writers — PJ Manney and David Brin — and Science of the Noosphere’s David Sloan Wilson, is the last in the series of conversations we’ve posted here. What does science fiction have to do with our quest to understand the modern scientific research that undergirds Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of a layer of human thought that envelops the earth? While tha...

Clément Vidal is a member of the research and development team of Human Energy, who identifies himself on his webpage as a big questions philosopher. He is also one of Human Energy’s resident experts on Teilhard de Chardin and the noosphere, which is what his conversation with David Sloan Wilson is primarily about. Clément is exceptionally well qualified in this regard. He wrote a wonderful illust...

Teilhard’s description of the noosphere covers various manifestations of human cultural and technological evolution. In explaining his vision as a “Plausible Biological Interpretation of Human History”, these are enumerated in three categories—the apparatus of heredity, the mechanical apparatus, and the cerebral apparatus. However, it’s the third feature of its anatomy—the cerebral apparatus—that...

This conversation between Shima Beigi and Science of the Noosphere’s David Sloan Wilson focuses on Shima’s book, Mindful Smart Cities: Rethinking Smart Cities with Mindfulness Engineering. What does Shima mean by “rethinking smart cities with mindfulness engineering”? This description of her book states it thusly: “The Artificial Intelligence fueled transition toward smart cities and network socie...

Michael Jacob is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of California in San Francisco, working on a project for Human Energy about the Global Brain. He and his team are in the early stages of trying to understand parallels and differences between the functioning of individual human brains and the large-scale collective consciousness that is currently taking shape in human society — i...

We first became aware of John Arquilla through a paper he wrote with David Ronfeldt, published by the RAND Corporation in 2020, titled “Whose Story Wins: Rise of the Noosphere, Noopolitik, and Information-Age Statecraft”. We learned later that this visionary pair of geopolitical thinkers had in fact coined the term Noopolitik 20 years earlier, in a paper they wrote when both were employed by RAND:...

According to his bio, Bruce Damer “has spent his life pursuing two great questions: How did life on Earth begin, and how can we give that life (and ourselves) a sustainable pathway into the cosmos? His primary research interest is “The Hot Springs Hypothesis for the Origin of Life”. Matthew Segall teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and has specialized in the study of Alfred N...