World System Energetics
Discussion
Leonid E. Grinin, Tessaleno C. Devezas,and Andrey V. Korotayev:
"Stephen I. Ternyik (‘World System Energetics’) notes that human socie-ties are evolving as energy transduction systems and the biophysical flow ofenergy in a socio-economic system ‘quantizes’ the flow of time and drivestemporal acceleration. The decisive role of money in a monetary productioneconomy is highlighted as temporal acce ss to energy. The greater the naturalenergy input for productive output, the higher the economic wave frequencyand the shorter the wave length. A singularization of human history, which is areplacement of long wave patterns, depends in the nearest future on the tech-nical achievement of a relatively constant energy input. According to the basicformulae of the Snooks – Panov curve, a significant quantum change of thetemporal flow will take place in the next decade; it is an open mathematicalguess and an ongoing human intelligence test, if this temporal turning point isof discrete or continuous nature,"