• Home
• Overview
  • Philosophy of HCS
  • What is HCS?
  • Why is HCS Important Now?
  • Ethics and Physics
• Theory
  • Wave Theory
  • History of the Wave
  • History of the Wave - Part 2
  • Emotions of Change
  • The Wiggle and the Pop
  • The Wiggle and the Pop - Part 2
  • A New Look at Normal
• Issues & Solutions
• Reviews
• Articles
  • Sharkonomics
  • The Hard Way: Lessons Learned from Economic Collapse
• Vital Links
• About HCSI
• Contact Us

history of the wave

Paul Kordis, September 2008

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

Stephen Jay Gould
as quoted in "Sunbeams," The Sun, October 2006

Approximately 15 billion years ago, give or take two to fifteen billion depending on whom you ask, the universe was created. To even begin to articulate the history of the universe, then, is a daunting task. Therefore, in order to squeeze cosmological time into a framework that people could better understand Carl Sagan (2004) used a one-year calendar (similar timelines can be found in Bottjer, 2005; "Exploring the creation/evolution controversy," 2004; Hawking, 1988; and "Hominid species timeline," 2004). Upon examination of this calendar one finds that the creation of the universe, called the big bang in scientific circles, occurred at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the beginning of January 1 st on the cosmological calendar. It would then take until March of the same year for the Milky Way to form, and the Sun and planets of our solar system would not come into being until August. Single cell organisms would not appear on Earth until September and multi-cellular organisms would not be present until November. On December 17 th invertebrates would emerge, on the 18 th early land plants would come into being, on the 20 th the first four limbed animals, on the 21 st various insects, and on the 24 th the first dinosaurs would appear. On the 25 th the first mammalian ancestors would arrive, as would the first known birds on the 27 th. On the 29 th the dinosaurs would be wiped out and mammals would soon emerge as the more dominant life form. By December 31 st at 10:15 a.m. apes would appear and by 11:54 p.m. anatomically modern humans would emerge. At 11:59:45 p.m. writing would be invented, at 11:59:50 p.m. the Egyptian pyramids would be built, and at the last second in the cosmological calendar Christopher Columbus would begin his famous voyage to the Americas.

Backing up just a bit it is important to note that, according to prevailing scientific belief, entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, became the dominant force in the universe immediately after the big bang. This entropic force dictates that the universe will eventually run down, even though it will take a very, very long time. It also creates the arrow of time because if things are constantly moving towards states of greater disorder they cannot reverse themselves and spontaneously escape to higher orders of organization.

However, when life appeared it began immediately to demonstrate syntropy, a force that is the opposite of entropy, because life naturally moves toward greater and greater degrees of organization and complexity (Szent-Gyorgyi, 1977). These forces of entropy and syntropy play an important background role in this Web site and are reflected in other human dichotomies such as open vs. closed societies, life and death, love and fear, etc. According to some, providing for the evolution of living syntropy, with humanity at its current apex, is the primary purpose of the universe and was at the heart of its creation (Barrow & Tipler, 1986; F. J. Dyson, 1985; Gardner, 2003; Tipler, 1994). The anthropic cosmological principle that is often used to espouse this purpose is hotly debated within scientific circled, especially when it implies a deity (Alger, 2001; Dawkins, 1987, 2006; Dennett, 2006; Hamer, 2004), but others find that even if one does not embrace the anthropic principle in its entirety, there is evidence to suggest the presence of psycho-bio-morphogenic fields (Sheldrake, 1995a, 1995b) that both mold evolution and predate any evolutionary progress.

Nonetheless, upon first glance one may conclude that not much syntropy occurred in the universe until the last part of the cosmological calendar year. Especially in human parlance, little occurred until people arrived on earth and started doing things with their newly created technologies. If one were, then, to take the history of human technological development and squeeze it into a calendar month, one might observe the following:

The pace of modern innovation and technological change has gone from swift to super-exponential. If one were to pretend that the entirety of human civilization was only one Super Month in length where every second represents two years. In the speeded up world of the “Super Month,” we would see a rather remarkable image of the development of the species known as Homo Sapiens. The phase we would know as that of the hunter/gatherer would consume virtually the entire month. This stage would last 29 days and 22.5 hours. This last hour and half, the time of movie, would represent the time of agriculture, towns and cities, and the birth of technology. The last 4 minutes of our artificial “super day” would be the Renaissance. The last two minutes would be the industrial age. And what about the time of television, lasers, satellites, biotechnology, super computers, robotics, artificial intelligence and spandex? This “age of high technology” which consumes us so thoroughly in the late 20th century would occupy about 20 second of this “Super Month” that represented the entirety of human existence. Within the next few super minutes of time – if we survive as a species – we could achieve remarkable things. We could colonize and terra-form planets, convert to clean and limitless energy, create von Neumann machines to search the universe for other intelligent life and much, much more. Time in our age of technology is increasing as a fourth order exponential…

(Pelton, 2000, p. 1)

Combining Sagan’s cosmological calendar with Pelton’s technology month one might easily find that the pace of change, driven primarily by new technology (Bell, 1973; Brockman, 2002; Broderick, 2001; Burrus, 1993; Cabot, 2001; Denning, 2001; Lynch & Kordis, 1988; Negroponte, 1995; Teich, 2002; Toffler, 1980; Zey, 1994), is advancing at impressive speed compared with cosmological or even human timescales (Barker, 1988; Brennan, 1990; Brockman, 1995; Davis & Meyer, 1999; Fogel, 2000; Kurzweil & Grossman, 2004; Naisbitt, 1988; O. B. Hardison, 1989; Toffler, 1984), but that the breakneck hyper-acceleration of change is an even more recent phenomenon (Gleik, 2000; Kaku, 1998) causing some to conclude that the trend must be reversed (Broderick, 2001; Honore, 2004; McKibben, 2003).

It has been predicted that humanity is fast approaching an omega point, or singularity (Broderick, 2001; Kurzweil, 2005; P. Russell, 1995, 2004; Sterling, 2004; Teilhard de Chardin, 1964, 2002), when predicting the future will be nearly impossible due to the rapid convergence of technology, humanity, and spirituality and the resulting pace of change. Therefore, if one were to map the advance of human technology and innovation towards this omega point it would look much like the following figure:

Advance of human technology and innovation over time.

(Adapted from Bronowski, 1973; Cippola, 1980; J. G. Clark, 1971; Derry & William, 1960; Fogel, 2000; McNeill, 1971; and Piggott, 1965)

In the figure above, the horizontal axis represents time by millennia and the vertical axis represents technological innovation and change on a relative scale. For example, there was a great leap in technological innovation and change beginning in the 1700s, but the bulk of all scientific discovery, technological innovation, and change occurred in the past 50 years. Therefore, from 9000 B.C. onward the growth of technology and its impact continued at a slow pace, appearing relatively flat on this illustration until one arrives at around 1000 B.C., at which time, much like the line of a hockey stick, technological development begins to accelerate.

By the 1700’s A.D. development had jumped drastically, and approached a near asymptote by the year 2000 A.D., completing the spike or hockey-stick pattern. This pattern also reflects the growth of world population and mirrors many other crucial factors. Key points on the chart include the following:

• The first agricultural revolution is signaled in the initial slow stage of growth.
• 2000 B.C. marks the beginning of metallurgy, mathematics, and writing.
• Year zero identifies the peak of the Roman civilization.
• The 1700s A.D. mark the industrial revolution and the second agricultural revolution.

The figure below helps to clarify the rate of technological progress and its impact on how the technology is applied to human activity, especially work.

Context and chronology of the waves of technical innovation.
(Adapted from Bell, 1973; Jensen, 1999; Kordis & Ribeiro, 2005;
Lynch & Kordis, 1988; and Toffler, 1980)

The long green curve on the top of the individual waves in the above figure demonstrates the acceleration of technology driven change in a more smoothed out fashion and represents the growth in the innovation and utilization of technology between the nearly flat portion of the previous change graph and the nearly vertical path circa 2000 A.D. (This curve also reflects the acceleration of communication, information, and the resulting level of near-to-chaos dynamics and perturbation in the overall human culture.) The blue waves of change lying underneath the larger curve of change roughly represent the portion of people involved in each prevailing technology during its ascension, peak, and decline (Schumpeter, 1961).

According to Toffler (1980), Ainsworth-Land (1986), Capra (1982), and Bell (1973), the first three great waves of technological change (and the eras of their greatest social, economic, and political impact) were the agricultural age, the industrial revolution, and the information age. People began to shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture between six and ten thousand years ago. By the early 1900s A.D. nearly 90 percent of people were involved in an agricultural pursuit. Presently, however, the number is between two and three percent. The industrial revolution began in approximately 1650 A.D. with the mechanical gardens in Europe. The percentage of people in the U.S. working in industry peaked in the 1950s, and the number has been declining since. The information age began circa 1965, with computers as the primary commodity, and peaked with respect to the percentage of people working in this technology around 1985.

As illustrated in the above figure, the new life wave, or wave four, began in the early 1980’s and is, as of this writing, involving more and more people in the production of its products and services. The new life wave (Lynch & Kordis, 1990) involves a convergence of six primary technologies including nanotechnology, that is, building materials, robots, and machines at the molecular level (American, 2002; Crandall, 1996; Drexler, 1990; Drexler, Peterson, & Pergamit, 1991; Gilder, 1989; M. A. Ratner & Ratner, 2002; Regis, 1995; Uldrich & Newberry, 2003; Wilson, Kannangara, Smith, & Simmons, 2002), bioengineering, which includes biotechnology, genetic engineering, stem cell therapy, cloning, bionics, biogerontology, and cell therapy (Borem, Santos, & Bowen, 2003; Freitas, 1999; Fumento, 2003; Goodsell, 2004; Grossman, 2000; Houdebine, 2003; Kurzweil & Grossman, 2004; Lambrecht, 2002; Lyon & Gorner, 1996; Mulhall, 2002; Nicholl, 2002; Nuland, 2005; Shostak, 2002; Stock, 2002; West, 2003), machine cognition, represented by a convergence of artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms, expert systems, fuzzy logic, and neural nets (G. B. Dyson, 1998; Glenn, 1989; Kurzweil, 1990, 2000; Levy, 1992; Mitchell, 1998; Moravec, 1988, 1999; Mulhall, 2002; Paul & Cox, 1996; Penrose, 1989; Port, 2005; S. J. Russell & Norviq, 2002; Stock, 1993; Ward, 2000; Zuboff, 1988), macro-robotics, that is, robots at a visible scale or larger (Brooks, 2002; Kurzweil, 2005; Menzel & D'Aluisio, 2000; Mulhall, 2002; Perkowitz, 2004; Warwick, 2004), exotic energy sources such as superconductivity, zero point energy, fuel cells, fusion, and renewable resources (Hawken, Lovins, & Lovins, 1999; Hoffmann, 2002; Ketterson & Song, 1999; King, 2002; Mallove, 1991; Rifkin, 2002; Vaitheeswaran, 2003), and new materials science including smart materials, materials with unusual strength and lightness, or materials with other unique properties(Addington & Schodek, 2004; Baker & Aston, 2005; Ball, 1999; A. Briggs, 1992; Kerrod, 2003; B. D. Ratner, Hoffman, Schoen, & Lemons, 2004; Ruzette & Leibler, 2005; Stix, 2005; Wigginton & Harris, 2002).

In addition, the convergent nature of technological inquiry is producing new combinations of production and application that will very likely have a profound impact on human development and the nature of change itself (Alexander, 2003; Bailey, 2005; A. Clark, 2003; Dewdney, 1998; Fukuyama, 2002; Garreau, 2005; Hayles, 1999; Hughes, 2004; Institute, 2004; Kaku, 1998; Mulhall, 2002; Naam, 2005; Pease, 2005; Roco & Bainbridge, 1999; Sherwin, 2004; Silver, 1998; Stock, 2002). Because of this, the listed references for one area are often equally applicable to many of the others.

Considering the nature of the individual waves of change, a few important characteristics seem worthy of note:

• As the waves progress they become shorter and shorter in duration.
• They are currently beginning to stack one upon another.
• There is less and less time to prepare for each subsequent wave.
• Each wave remains productive by adopting the technology of the waves that follow.

For example, the time for adaptation was quite long between hunting and gathering and agriculture. One could wait thousands of years to abandon the migratory following of the herds and the seasons and adopt the new processes that others had already perfected for growing plants and living in one place. There was plenty of time for changing on the backside of the wave and one need only adopt the new technology, not invent it. In the shift from agriculture to industry the transition time was greatly reduced from thousands of years to mere generations.

However, merely changing after the fact and adopting the use of farm machinery that others had already invented remained available and potentially profitable. In the shift from industry to information, though, there was little if any lag. Therefore, the most successful people and organizations changed right with the times, adopting and adapting the new technology to meet their needs. In the transition between the information wave and the new-life wave attempts at navigating the future will need to be made ahead of time, based on intuition and good investigation, in order to be successful. Therefore, as the waves grow shorter and the time for adaptation decreases, people will be required to shift from changing on the backside of the wave to changing on the front. And, as the waves continue to stack, people may find that they must simultaneously adapt ahead of time to multiple waves of change.

Mauldin notes:

The Third Wave was actually the result of an innovation cycle that we can call the Information Age. I believe we are only halfway through the Information Age, with more profound changes as to how we work and play just around the corner. Instead of one wave of innovation following another, we are going to see multiple waves at roughly the same time. The combined effects are going to produce a period of change unlike anything seen in the history.

(Mauldin, 2006)

Importantly, each of the previous new waves would provide work for those leaving or being forced out of the wave that came before. But the new life wave is not picking up the slack caused by American jobs lost in the information wave. This is due, in part, to the outsourcing of white-collar and gold-collar jobs to other countries and to governmental restrictions in the United States on certain technologies in wave four such as stem cell therapy (Corbett, 2004; Dobbs, 2004; Kelley, 1985). Perhaps with a new administration in government and a renewed focus on green collar jobs this deficit might be attenuated. But as of this writing it has yet to be seen. (One could also argue that wave four technology in America has taken a back seat to the prosecution of war and to the takeover of the economy by finance. But that issue will be covered in more detail later.)

In addition, the stacking of waves and the need to change ahead of time to be successful can be problematic for many individuals who are comfortable with changing slowly and after the fact, but are poorly suited to proactively embracing the uncertainties of the frequency and speed of change (Weick & Quinn, 1999). Over the course of time on the cosmological calendar human development appears to have lagged far behind that of technology development, especially in the appropriate use of that technology (Meadows, Randers, & Meadows, 2004; Rifkin & Howard, 1980; Speth, 2004; Tainter, 2000).

Below is an approximation of this disparity:

The above figure shows the great divide between human development, technological development, and humanity’s ability to understand and to wisely use the technology that it has created. Apparently, in order to close the gap, human development must make quick and broad advances in its social, emotional, and spiritual-ethical development (Bar-On & Parker, 2000; Bloom, 2000; J. Briggs & Peat, 2000; George, 2002; Hawken, 1993; Mitroff & Denton, 1999; Nasr, 1997; Pink, 2005; Sessions, 1995; Wilber, 2000).

As the following quotes suggest, if there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery:

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.

Dennis Gabor

Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy.

Pope Paul VI

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Albert Einstein

The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment. I asked for bread and was given a tranquilizer.

Malcolm Muggeridge

As an example of these sentiments, some have suggested that for decades the technological capacity has existed to meet the physical needs of the entire planet (Fuller, 1981). Yet humanity has chosen not to meet these needs, due in large part to its social, political, religious, and economic systems (Chomsky, 2005). To change this bewildering behavior will likely require a concerted focus on improving the emotional, social, and spiritual intelligence of humanity at large, that is, unless people were to take a more Luddite approach and dismantle their technologies instead.

Fogel notes:

The proposition that religion and politics in America have a cyclic component does not mean that [these] cycles have been the dominant characteristic of life over the past three centuries. Quite the contrary: the dominant characteristic has been a relatively steady and rapid growth in the economy based on an accelerating pace of technological change that has drastically transformed life within living memory. What has been cyclic is the tendency of these technological advances to outpace the development both of ethical guidelines for their utilization and of human institutions to control them. It is the lag between technological transformation and the human capacity to cope with change that has repeatedly provoked the crises that usher in profound reconsiderations of ethical values, that produced new agendas for ethical and social reform, and that give rise to political movements to implement these agendas.

The more far-reaching the technological change, the more sweeping the attendant changes in economic and social institutions have been, and the more highly charged has been the battle over appropriate reform.

(Fogel, 2000, pp. 40, 41)

references

Addington, D. M., & Schodek, D. L. (2004). Smart materials and technologies in architecture. Burlington, Massachusetts: Architectural Press.

Ainsworth-Land, G. T. (1986). Grow or die. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Alexander, B. (2003). Rapture: How biotech became the new religion. New York: Basic Books.

Alger, M. (2001). The "God" part of the brain: A scientific interpretation of human spirituality and God. Brooklyn, New York: Rogue Press.

American, S. (Ed.). (2002). Understanding Nanotechnology. New York: Warner Books.

Bailey, R. (2005). Liberation biology: The scientific and moral case for the biotech revolution. New York: Prometheus Books.

Baker, S., & Aston, A. (2005). The business of nanotech. BusinessWeek, February 14, 64 - 71.

Ball, P. (1999). Made to measure: New materials for the 21st century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bar-On, R., & Parker, J. D. A. (Eds.). (2000). The handbook of emotional intelligence: Theory, development, assessment, and application at home, school and in the workplace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Barker, J. A. (1988). Discovering the future: The business of paradigms. St. Paul, Minnesota: ILI Press.

Barrow, J. D., & Tipler, F. J. (1986). The anthropic cosmological principle. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bell, D. (1973). The coming of post-industrial society: A venture in social forecasting. New York: Basic Books.

Bloom, H. (2000). Global brain: The evolution of mass mind from the big bang to the 21st century. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Borem, A., Santos, F. R., & Bowen, D. E. (2003). Understanding biotechnology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall PTR.

Bottjer, D. J. (2005, August). The early evolution of animals: Tiny fossils reveal that complex animal life is older than we thought - by at least as much as 50 million years. Scientific American, 293, 42 - 47.

Brennan, R. P. (1990). Levitating trains and kamikaze genes: Technological literacy for the 1990's. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Briggs, A. (1992). The science of new materials. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.

Briggs, J., & Peat, F. D. (2000). Seven life lessons of chaos: Spiritual wisdom from the science of change. New York: Harper Perennial.

Brockman, J. (1995). The third culture. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Brockman, J. (Ed.). (2002). The next fifty years: Science in the first half of the twenty-first century. New York: Vintage Books.

Broderick, D. (2001). The spike: How our lives are being transformed by rapidly advancing technologies. New York: Forge Books.

Bronowski, J. (1973). The ascent of man. Boston: Little, Brown.

Brooks, R. A. (2002). Flesh and machines: How robots will change us. New York: Pantheon Books.

Burrus, D. (1993). Technotrends: How to use technology to go beyond your competition. New York: HarperBusiness.

Cabot, J. E. (2001). As the future catches you: How genomics & other forces are changing your life, work, health & wealth. New York: Crown Business.

Capra, F. (1982). The turning point: Science society, and the rising culture. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Chomsky, N. (2005). Government in the future. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Cippola, C. M. (1980). Before the Industrial Revolution: European society and economy, 1000 - 1700. New York: Norton.

Clark, A. (2003). Natural-born cyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence. In. New York: Oxford University Press.

Clark, J. G. (1971). World prehistory: An outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Corbett, M. F. (2004). The outsourcing revolution: Why it makes sense and how to do it right. Chicago: Dearborn Trade Publishing.

Crandall, B. C. (1996). Nanotechnology: Molecular speculations on global abundance. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Davis, S., & Meyer, C. (1999). Blur: The speed of change in the connected economy. New York: Warner Books.

Dawkins, R. (1987). The blind watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Dawkins, R. (2006). The God delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Dennett, D. C. (2006). Breaking the spell. New York: Viking.

Denning, P. J. (2001). The invisible future: The seamless integration of technology into everyday life. New York: McGraw-Hill Trade.

Derry, T. K., & William, T. I. (1960). A short history of technology. London: Oxford University Press.

Dewdney, C. (1998). Last flesh: Life in the transhuman era. Toronto, Ontario: HarperCollins Canada.

Dobbs, L. (2004). Exporting America: Why corporate greed is shipping American jobs overseas. New York: Time Warner Book Group.

Drexler, K. E. (1990). Engines of creation: The coming era of nanotechnology. New York: Anchor Books.

Drexler, K. E., Peterson, C., & Pergamit, G. (1991). Unbounding the future: The nanotechnology revolution. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Dyson, F. J. (1985). Infinite in all directions: Gifford lectures given at Aberdeen, Scotland. In. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Dyson, G. B. (1998). Darwin among the machines: The evolution of global intelligence. New York: Perseus Books Group.

Exploring the creation/evolution controversy. (2004). Retrieved April, 2004, from http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/geo_timeline.html

Fogel, R. W. (2000). The fourth great awakening & the future of egalitarianism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Freitas, R. A. (1999). Nanomedicine, vol.1:Basic capabilities. Georgetown, Texas: Landes Bioscience.

Fukuyama, F. (2002). Our posthuman future: Consequences of the biotechnology revolution. In. New York: Picador.

Fuller, R. B. (1981). Critical path. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Fumento, M. (2003). Bioevolution: How biotechnology is changing our world. San Francisco: Encounter Books.

Gardner, J. N. (2003). Biocosm: The new scientific theory of evolution: Intelligent life is the architect of the universe. Makawao, HI: Inner Ocean.

Garreau, J. (2005). Radical evolution: The promise and peril of enhancing our minds, our bodies - and what it means to be human. New York: Doubleday.

George, J. (2002). Asking for the Earth: Waking up to the spiritual/ecological crisis. New York: Barrytown Limited.

Gilder, G. (1989). Microcosm: The quantum revolution in economics and technology. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Gleik, J. (2000). Faster: The acceleration of just about everything. London: Vintage.

Glenn, J. C. (1989). Future mind: Artificial intelligence. Washington: Acropolis Books, Ltd.

Goodsell, D. S. (2004). Bionanotechnology: Lessons from nature. New York: Wiley-Liss.

Grossman, T. (2000). The Baby Boomer's guide to living forever. Golden, Colorado: The Hubristic Press.

Hamer, D. H. (2004). The God gene: How faith is hardwired into our genes. New York: Doubleday.

Hawken, P. (1993). The ecology of commerce: A declaration of sustainability. New York: HarperBusiness.

Hawken, P., Lovins, A. B., & Lovins, L. H. (1999). Natural capitalism: Creating the next industrial revolution (1st ed.). Boston: Little Brown and Co.

Hawking, S. W. (1988). A brief history of time: From the big bang to black holes. New York: Bantam.

Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hoffmann, P. (2002). Tomorrow's energy: Hydrogen, fuel cells, and the prospects for a cleaner planet. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Hominid species timeline. (2004). Retrieved April, 2004, from http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/timeline.html

Honore, C. (2004). In praise of slowness: How a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed. San Francisco: HarpersSanFrancisco.

Houdebine, L.-M. (2003). Animal transgenesis and cloning. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Hughes, J. (2004). Citizen cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Institute, I. (2004). The scientific conquest of death. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Libros En Red.

Jensen, R. (1999). The dream society: How the coming shift from information to imagination will transform your business. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kaku, M. (1998). Visions: How science will revolutionize the 21st century. New York: Anchor Books.

Kelley, R. E. (1985). The gold-collar worker: Harnessing the brainpower of the new workforce. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Kerrod, R. (2003). New materials: 21st century science. New York: Franklin Watts.

Ketterson, J. B., & Song, S. N. (1999). Superconductivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

King, M. B. (2002). Tapping the zero point energy: Free energy in today's physics. Kempton, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press.

Kordis, P., & Ribeiro, L. (2005). Uma Janela no Futuro. Sao Paolo: Planeta.

Kurzweil, R. (1990). The age of intelligent machines. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Kurzweil, R. (2000). The age of spiritual machines: When computers exceed human intelligence. New York: Penguin Books.

Kurzweil, R. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. New York: Viking Books.

Kurzweil, R., & Grossman, T. (2004). Fantastic voyage: Live long enough to live forever. New York: Rodale Books.

Lambrecht, B. (2002). Dinner at the New Gene Cafe: How genetic engineering is changing what we eat, how we live, and the global politics of food. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Levy, S. (1992). Artificial life: The quest for a new creation. New York: Pantheon Books.

Lynch, D., & Kordis, P. L. (1988). Strategy of the dolphin: Scoring a win in a chaotic world. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Lynch, D., & Kordis, P. L. (1990). Code of the monarch. Fort Collins: Brain Technologies Corporation.

Lyon, J., & Gorner, P. (1996). Altered fates: Gene therapy and the retooling of human life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Mallove, E. F. (1991). Fire from ice: Searching for the truth behind the cold fusion furor. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Mauldin, J. (2006). Just one thing: Twelve of the world's best investors reveal the one strategy you can't overlook. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying human in an engineered age. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

McNeill, W. H. (1971). A world history. New York: Oxford University Press.

Meadows, D. H., Randers, J., & Meadows, D. L. (2004). Limits to growth: The 30-year update. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company.

Menzel, P., & D'Aluisio, F. (2000). Robo sapiens: Evolution of a new species. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Mitchell, M. (1998). An introduction to genetic algorithms (complex adaptive systems). Cambridge: Bradford Books.

Mitroff, I., & Denton, E. A. (1999). A spiritual audit of corporate America: A hard look at spirituality, religion, and values in the workplace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers.

Moravec, H. (1988). Mind children: The future of robotic and human intelligence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Moravec, H. (1999). Robot: Mere machine to transcendent mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mulhall, D. (2002). Our molecular future: How nanotechnology, robotics, genetics, and artificial intelligence will transform our world. New York: Prometheus Books.

Naam, R. (2005). More than human: Embracing the promise of biological enhancement. New York: Broadway Books.

Naisbitt, J. (1988). Megatrends: Ten new directions transforming our lives. New York: Warner Books.

Nasr, S. H. (1997). Man and nature: The spiritual crisis in modern man. Chicago: ABC International Group.

Negroponte, N. (1995). Being digital. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Nicholl, D. S. T. (2002). An introduction to genetic engineering (studies in biology). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nuland, S. (2005). Do you want to live forever?: Aubrey de Grey thinks he knows how to defeat aging. He's brilliant, but is he nuts? Technology Review, 108, 37 - 45.

O. B. Hardison, J. (1989). Disappearing through the skylight: Culture and technology in the twentieth century. New York: Viking.

Paul, G. S., & Cox, E. (1996). Beyond humanity: Cyberevolution and future minds. Rockland, Massachusetts: Charles River Media, Inc.

Pease, R. (2005). Living robots powered by muscle. Retrieved January 17, 2005, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4181197.stm

Pelton, J. N. (2000). The next billion years and the significance of the emerging global brain. Retrieved November, 2004, from http://www.clarkefoundation.org/archives/lectures/2000.html

Penrose, R. (1989). The emperor's new mind: Concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics. New York: Penguin Books.

Perkowitz, S. (2004). Digital people: From bionic humans to androids. Washington: Joseph Henry Press.

Piggott, S. (1965). Ancient Europe from the beginnings of agriculture to classical antiquity. Chicago: Aldine.

Pink, D. H. (2005). A whole new mind: Moving from the information age to the conceptual age. New York: Riverhead Books.

Port, O. (2005). Holy screaming teraflops: IBM's Blue Gene is the world's fastest supercomputer - for now. BusinessWeek, January 17, 2005, 62.

Ratner, B. D., Hoffman, A. S., Schoen, F. J., & Lemons, J. E. (2004). Biomaterials science: An introduction to materials in medicine. San Diego, California: Academic Press.

Ratner, M. A., & Ratner, D. (2002). Nanotechnology: A gentle introduciton to the next big idea. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Regis, E. (1995). Nano: The emerging science of nanotechnology: Remaking the world - molecule by molecule. Boston: Little, Brown.

Rifkin, J. (2002). The hydrogen economy: The creation of the world-wide energy web and the redistribution of power on earth. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

Rifkin, J., & Howard, T. (1980). Entropy: A new world view. New York: Viking.

Roco, M. C., & Bainbridge, W. S. (Eds.). (1999). Converging technologies for improving human performance: Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. New York: Springer.

Russell, P. (1995). The global brain awakens. Palo Alto, California: Global Brain, Inc.

Russell, P. (2004). Waking up in time: Finding inner peace in times of accelerating change. Retrieved January, 2005, from http://www.peterussell.com/WUIT/index.html

Russell, S. J., & Norviq, P. (2002). Artificial intelligence: A modern approach (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Ruzette, A.-V., & Leibler, U. (2005). Plastic additives of the future. Nature Materials, 4, 19-31.

Sagan, C. (2004). The universe in one year. Retrieved November, 2004, from http://school.discovery.com/schooladventures/universe/itsawesome/cosmiccalendar/pag

Schumpeter, J. A. (1961). The theory of economic development. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sessions, G. (1995). Deep ecology for the twenty-first century: Readings on the philosophy and practice of the new environmentalism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Sheldrake, R. (1995a). A new science of life: The hypothesis of morphic resonance (Reprint ed.). Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.

Sheldrake, R. (1995b). The presence of the past: Morphic resonance & habits of nature (Reprint ed.). Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International.

Sherwin, B. L. (2004). Golems among us: How a Jewish legend can help us navigate the biotech century. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

Shostak, S. (2002). Becoming immortal: Combining cloning and stem-cell therapy. New York: New York University Press.

Silver, L. M. (1998). Remaking Eden: How genetic engineering and cloning will transform the American family. New York: Avon Books, Inc.

Speth, J. G. (2004). Red sky at morning: America and the crisis of the global environment. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Sterling, B. (2004, September). The evolution will be mechanized: Inside the unfathomable superhuman future after the "singularity". Wired.

Stix, G. (2005). Nanotubes in the clean room: Talismans of a thousand graduate projects may soon make their way into electronic memories. Scientific American, 292(2), 82 - 85.

Stock, G. (1993). Metaman: The merging of humans and machines into a global superorganism. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Stock, G. (2002). Redesigning humans: Our inevitable genetic future. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Sunbeams. (2006, October). The Sun, 48.

Szent-Gyorgyi, A. (1977). Drive in living matter to perfect itself. Synthesis 1, 1(1), 14 - 26.

Tainter, J. A. (2000). The collapse of complex societies (new studies in archaeology). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Teich, A. H. (2002). Technology and the future (Ninth ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing.

Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1964). The future of man. New York: Harper and Row.

Teilhard de Chardin, P. (2002). The phenomenon of man. New York: Perennial.

Tipler, F. J. (1994). The physics of immortality: Modern cosmology, God, and the resurrection of the dead. New York: Doubleday.

Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York: William Morrow & Company.

Toffler, A. (1984). Future shock. New York: Bantam.

Uldrich, J., & Newberry, D. (2003). The next big thing is really small: How nanotechnology will change the future of your business. New York: Crown Business.

Vaitheeswaran, V. V. (2003). Power to the people: How the coming energy revolution will transform an industry, change our lives, and maybe even save the planet. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Ward, M. (2000). Virtual organisms: The startling world of artificial life. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.

Warwick, K. (2004). March of the machines: The breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Weick, K. E., & Quinn, R. E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 361 - 386.

West, M. D. (2003). The immortal cell: One scientist's quest to solve the mystery of human aging. New York: Doubleday.

Wigginton, M., & Harris, J. (2002). Intelligent skins. Burlington, Massachusetts: Architectural Press.

Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, spirituality: the spirit of evolution (2nd ed.). Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Wilson, M., Kannangara, K., Smith, G., & Simmons, M. (2002). Nanotechnology: Basic science and emerging technologies. New York: Chapman & Hall.

Zey, M. G. (1994). Seizing the future: How the coming revolution in science, technology, and industry will expand the frontiers of human potential and reshape the planet. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Zuboff, S. (1988). In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Respond to this topic.

Next topic: History of the Wave - Part 2

founder

Paul L. Kordis, PhD
Human Capital Sustainability

advisors

James H. Banning, PhD
Campus Ecology

Gary Geroy, PhD
Human Capital & Economic Development

Ed Goodman, P.E., MSCE
Sustainable Architecture

Bruce Hall, PhD
Social Services

M.L. Johnson, EdD, PhD
Education and Physiology

David T. Moran, PhD
Neurobiology

Beverly Title, PhD
Restorative Justice