Month: September 2022

INHERITANCE. "Biological (or genetic) evolution occurs through genetic variation and reproduction, and involves the transfer of genes from one generation to the next. Cultural evolution occurs through the development of customs and languages, and involves the transfer of information either within a generation or across many generations." But genes are information. https://lnkd.in/d-EG9jg View in LinkedIn

CULTURAL EVOLUTION of the human species has led to the remarkable era of the digital and the internet age. At the same time, biology has leapt forward with synthetic biology and the ability to edit our own genome and potentially affect our own evolution. These tools enable our cultural and our biological evolution, especially as the two start to overlap. Now is the time to look at that overlap. View in LinkedIn

PROPELLED BY CULTURAL ADAPTATION. "Around 60,000 years ago, cumulative cultural adaptation was what propelled modern humans out of Africa in small tribal groups, by enabling us to acquire knowledge and produce technologies suitable to different environments." https://lnkd.in/dk3g3fx View in LinkedIn

FASTER CHANGE. "Cultural evolution is expected to be faster than biological evolution because of its Lamarckian nature, and because cultural information is transmitted through different routes than genetic information." https://lnkd.in/du2rR_7 View in LinkedIn

ACCUMULATED CHANGE. "The pace of change of human material culture appears faster in more recent periods than it does for older ones. More surprising, however, is the fact that the magnitude of accumulated cultural changes grows at an increasingly faster pace with time, which is more so than the magnitude of accumulated biological change." https://lnkd.in/du2rR_7 View in LinkedIn

AN ENORMOUS CULTURAL EXPERIMENT is taking share before our eyes. Our youth have digitized childhoods, locked into social media in a way never seen before. The next generation will have an entirely different relationship to the internet and the cybernetic world, and likely be early adopters of new virtual technology. View in LinkedIn

OLD DRIVERS. "Historically, cultural evolution occurred through migration. Migration happens as a result of war, geographical changes or survival requirements and demands. War affected the cultures morals, and regions (if they were dominated etc.) Regional domination could imply control over the population, causing the citizens to move.” https://lnkd.in/dsKGhcp View in LinkedIn

COMMUNICATION IMPACT. "Throughout human history new technologies of communication have had a significant impact on culture." The printing press. Morse code. The telegraph. The telephone. TV. Radio. The internet. https://lnkd.in/d8-nHvR View in LinkedIn

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE. "The invention of the printing press was at its time perceived as a threat to European culture, social order and morality. “Ever since they began to practice this perverse excess of printing books, the church has been greatly damaged,” lamented Francisco Penna, a Dominican defender of the Spanish Inquisition." There are modern parallels of course. https://lnkd.in/d8-nHvR View in LinkedIn

NEW HUMAN ECOLOGY. "The internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century, we can say that humankind is now entirely connected." https://lnkd.in/dsHe6fk View in LinkedIn