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Global Brains & Singularities: Cadell Last & Michael Garfield Debate The Technopocalypse
Cadell Last is an evolutionary anthropologist at the Global Brain Institute and producer of the PBS Digital Studios series The Advanced Apes. In our recent email correspondence, we discussed the possibility that our entire planet is waking up as a single super-intelligent organism, dreams of a technological singularity, and the possible consequences — both light and dark — of such a transition, both for humankind and the entire biosphere…
MG: So tell me about this conference you attended! That seems like a good place to start.
CL: I spoke at the first Evolution, Complexity, & Cognition Global Brain Institute seminar on October 4th last year. The seminar was hosted by cyberneticist Dr. Francis Heylighen. The function of the seminar was to help the Global Brain Institute develop a clear research trajectory for cybernetic and Global Brain theory. My talk was focused on an attempt to merge evolutionary, anthropological, and cybernetic theory. I think the result is a theory of meta-system transitions that can explain the pattern, diffusion, and timing of human meta-system transitions, with perhaps important insights into the future of our system development and evolution.
MG: So let’s pretend I didn’t understand what you just said. How do you see…
