Evolutionary Clocks

Typology

Mixel Kiemen:

"Five evolutionary media, each operating at a different speed: biological, memetic, historical, industrial, and digital. Their most remarkable characteristic is acceleration towards the same convergence.

Each new medium allows evolutionary developments to unfold over increasingly shorter periods, while influencing the older processes from which it emerged. Let us revisit these five clocks, starting with the fastest.

Digital Evolution — Decades

The digital clock began with a pioneering phase, 0-D, extending from early theoretical and electronic computing to the emergence of interconnected computer networks.

From the 1980s onwards, digital nomads (1-D) explored personal computing and emerging digital environments. Agile tribes (2-D) subsequently developed open-source communities and collaborative networks, helping make the internet widely accessible.

The rise of digital platforms (3-D) brought increasingly sophisticated coordination and control. Social media, search engines and major technology corporations transformed the internet into an environment increasingly organised around data accumulation, algorithms and platform governance. This development has also been described as technofeudalism.

Today, Large Language Models and AI agents are opening a fourth configuration: Digital Modernity (4-D). Digital systems are becoming environments in which humans and AI can jointly investigate, create and reorganise knowledge. From the perspective of SoC, this suggests a transition from three-loop control space towards four-loop workspace.

The entire development has unfolded within a few decades.

Industrial Evolution — Centuries

The industrial clock is older. We can identify 0-IR in the development of watermills and windmills, followed by steam power (1-IR), electricity and internal combustion (2-IR), computation (3-IR), and today’s AI-driven transformation (4-IR).

Across these revolutions, humanity progressively developed the capacity to harness physical forces, organise increasingly complex production systems and eventually automate aspects of information processing and cognition.

The industrial and digital clocks now reinforce one another. Digital technologies accelerate scientific discovery, while industrial infrastructures supply the energy, materials and computational resources needed for further digital development.

Historical Evolution — Millennia

An older clock concerns the evolution of civilisations, knowledge and institutions.

Within my research on the Fourth Generation University (4GU), I explore this development through successive configurations of higher learning.

The cultural foundations of organised knowledge belong to 0-GU. The philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and China, including the work of Confucius, provide intellectual roots for 1-GU, while increasingly formal institutions of higher learning developed over subsequent centuries.

The Second Generation University (2-GU) established education and research as central institutional functions. The Third Generation University (3-GU) progressively added knowledge valorisation and innovation, particularly through the development of modern industrial society.

Today, a Fourth Generation University (4-GU) community is emerging, exploring how universities can participate in the evolution of entire innovation ecosystems.

The historical clock unfolds over millennia, while the industrial clock unfolds over centuries and the digital clock over decades.

Yet 4-GU, 4-IR and 4-D are now emerging within the same historical moment.

This convergence makes Institutional Plasticity increasingly important: the capacity of institutions to adapt their own organisation while participating in technological and societal transformation.

Memetic and Biological Evolution — Millennia to Billions of Years

Two older clocks complete the picture.

Memetic evolution concerns the transmission and transformation of learned behaviour, knowledge and shared meaning. Its foundations precede humanity, while human language, culture, ritual and writing dramatically accelerated its development.

Biological evolution operates across millions and billions of years. Through genetic variation, inheritance and natural selection, life developed increasingly sophisticated forms of organisation, eventually producing nervous systems, complex cognition and human civilisation."

The Convergence

Today, something extraordinary is happening.

The youngest evolutionary clocks are beginning to intervene directly in the oldest. Genetic engineering and CRISPR allow biological processes to be deliberately modified through knowledge developed within scientific institutions, supported by industrial and digital technologies.

Evolutionary processes that once operated at radically different speeds are becoming increasingly interconnected."

(https://mixelkiemen.substack.com/p/take-2-instruments-of-inner-space?)