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IN PERSPECTIVE. "In his Cosmic Calendar, with each month representing slightly over one billion years, Sagan dated the major events during the first 11 months of the cosmic year. Basically, humans are just the new kids in the block, and only evolved late at night on the last day of this Cosmic Calendar." https://lnkd.in/dTveM5M View in LinkedIn

JOINED AT THE HIP. "Technological Evolution is Cultural Evolution. However, technology’s desires are not dictates. Perhaps what we fear most about technology is ourselves. For better or worse, technology’s evolution and our own are inseparable." https://lnkd.in/dZh-rjw View in LinkedIn

ENDLESS RECONFIGURATION. “Slowly, at a pace measured in decades, we are shifting from technologies that produced fixed physical outputs to technologies whose main character is that they can be combined and configured endlessly for fresh purposes. Technology, once a means of production, is becoming a chemistry.” (Brian Arthur). https://lnkd.in/dhVUUSY View in LinkedIn

TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTION. "Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute believes that Technology evolves over time: “machines started as disparate pieces of seemingly unconnected technologies, but like humans, they also have an origin and a process of evolution.” He is arguably the first person to tackle the question of the origin and evolution of machines." https://lnkd.in/dhVUUSY View in LinkedIn

OPTICAL ILLUSION. “Having such a block of time missing just before the rapid Cambrian explosion has made some people suspicious that it might not have been as much of an explosion as it appears. It would be a bit like feeling confused at the climax of a story because you had skipped the setup. A new paper in Nature suggests that far from concealing the story of the Cambrian explosion, the events that created the Great Unconformity may actually explain it.’ https://lnkd.in/dtYSB5v View in LinkedIn

DEFINITION. "Technological evolution refers to the changes over time in technology that give humans increased control over their environment." https://lnkd.in/d-EG9jg View in LinkedIn

PRECAMBRIAN GAP. “There’s a widespread gap in the rock record immediately preceding the Cambrian explosion called the Great Unconformity. The boundary is so prominent—often separating very old igneous and metamorphic rocks from the much younger sedimentary rocks above, as is the case at the base of the Grand Canyon—that all rocks older than this are often lumped together as simply "Precambrian.” https://lnkd.in/dtYSB5v View in LinkedIn

FAST ADVANCES. “We put together pieces of metal alloy and fossil fuel so that we hurtle through the sky at close to the speed of sound; we organize tiny signals from the spins of atomic nuclei to make images of the neural circuits inside our brains; we organize biological objects — enzymes — to snip tiny slivers of molecules from DNA and paste them into bacterial cells...Two or three centuries ago we could not have imagined these powers.” (W. Brian Arthur). https://lnkd.in/dBf9m3S View in LinkedIn

CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION. “The familiar Cambrian explosion, which started around 540 million years ago, was a game-changer for life on Earth. Bacteria (and archaea) had ruled the planet for over 3 billion years before multi-cellular animals came on the scene. When they did, they diversified rapidly (at least in terms of the span of geologic time). Though we’re right to be impressed by the sudden explosion of life, it’s not the only remarkable thing in that portion of Earth’s history.” https://lnkd.in/dtYSB5v View in LinkedIn

TECHNOLOGY. "The first notable attempt was made in 1954, by the philosopher Martin Heidegger in his ground breaking essay, The Question Concerning Technology. In it, he describes technology not as something we build, but as something we uncover and enframe. In other words, we are not wholly responsible for man-made wonders, nor are we entirely in control." https://lnkd.in/dZh-rjw View in LinkedIn