Fourth Major Evolutionary Transition

Discussion

'Axial Entities of the Noosphere as the Fourth 'Major Evolutionary Transition'

David Ronfeldt:

"This will be a "Fourth Major Evolutionary Transition” (MET) from a TIMN and NOO perspective.

The first occurred when the oral information-communications revolution enabled the tribal form to take hold ages ago;

The second, when writing and printing enabled the hierarchical institutional form to consolidate a couple millennia ago;

The third when the electrical information-communications revolution (telephony, telegraphy, etc.) enabled the market form to establish itself in the mix a couple centuries ago. As societies advanced through these METs, so did the noosphere’s formation.

Today we are still on the threshold of a fourth socio-cultural MET: an MET about the spread of the network form enabled by digital and post-digital information-communications technologies. During 1993-1996, when I first wrote about an eventual +N transition, I wasn’t thinking about AIs being important for this. I now sense they may be crucial.

Winning the struggles to add a commons realm, then constructing it alongside the existing three realms (again: civil society, government, market economy) will be a daunting endeavor. It may require far more advanced information, communications, and other noospheric capabilities than I first supposed. Vast world-wide networks will have to be built for monitoring, processing, and sharing all sorts of inputs about all sorts of conditions — environmental, societal, holospheric, etc. This surely can’t and won’t be done without the participation of AIs and socio-noospheric entities like AEONs."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/updates-about-superorganisms-holospheres)