ABSTRACT: The study of big history attempts to identify major trends and processes throughout the development and evolution of the local universe. Big history has allowed for the integration of many disparate academic subjects, revealing a science and art of studying the emergence of complexity, the relation between evolutionary processes, and the cosmic context of the human experience. Current big historical data and theory identifies “Three Eras” of ordered and organizing complexity regimes: Physical, Biological, and Cultural Eras. These Eras change as a consequence of “Three Evolutionary Processes”: Physical, Biological, and Cultural Evolution. Contemporary science has developed the necessary tools to extrapolate and make predictions about the future of both the Physical and Biological Eras of evolution, but the potential future of the Cultural Era of evolution remains mysterious, yet intriguing. Cosmological theory predicts that all Eras will eventually end in thermodynamic equilibrium, or “heat death”. However, throughout the history of the cosmos, complexity and order have steadily increased in our local region of the universe, drifting further and further from simplicity and thermodynamic equilibrium in the process. Physical systems achieve higher order through gravitationally influenced energy flows; and living systems achieve higher organization through an information-based regulation of energy flows. Both processes contribute to the cosmic trend towards STEM (space, time, energy, matter) compression; hence complexity localization. Cosmic evolution is fundamentally unified throughout this complexification process, manifesting as physicochemical, biochemical, and biocultural evolution, respectively. By situating biocultural evolution within the context of cosmic evolution, as well as extrapolating the trend of increasing complexity, I attempt to construct a useful model for understanding the human deep future. This includes an addition and/or reformulation of technological singularity theory with the concept “atechnogenesis”, as well as an in-depth analysis of the potential properties of a “technocultural” world. Furthermore, I argue that the future of cosmic evolution, as emerging from the interaction of culture, technology, language, and mind, will be both hyper-local and hyper-integrated. These properties may generate an “Omega Civilization”, which would be a civilization characterized by higher phenomenological experience, the highest possible levels of local information processing, as well as the highest possible levels of local energy control, leading to universe replication via developmental singularity. Therefore, if the complexity localization trend holds throughout the whole of an interconnected cosmic evolutionary process, we have the potential to build a local model of cosmic evolution from “Big Bang to Developmental Singularity”. A general cosmic model could be tested within the EvoDevo Universe Framework, which predicts that the physical universe itself displays life history characteristics like birth, growth, reproduction, and senescence. As a result of this analysis, I demonstrate that trends and processes characteristic of the big historical analysis can be useful tools for modeling and predicting the future of cosmic evolution. These models and predictions have significant consequences for our understanding of the deep future, which may in turn significantly affect the future of many cultural institutions. In this work I also attempt to build upon the big historical approach, which emphasizes the integration of knowledge from the sciences and humanities. Of course, in this extrapolation and speculation I make a fundamental assumption that the frontier of cosmic evolution will not suffer from either an internal or an external existential crisis.
Thanks mk, will appreciate your thoughts I'm sure. I've been getting some helpful feedback, and I've sent it out to a few colleagues for their thoughts... so by the time it's through peer review, etc. I think it will be a fairly polished piece. My problem was choosing when to upload it because I always want to update and change it!