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Abstract
A study of human social systems at planetary scale examines whether our technology, economy, culture, and flows of information are component-processes in a unified, living system. Through a biological lens of structure, function, and geographic mapping of social systems, we consider collective humanity from evolutionary and developmental principles. We focus on how such a system could be evolvable, and the role for planetary scale information and communications technology in facilitating evolvability. Massively interconnected global technology has established a novel form of niche construction, stabilizing modes of collective inheritance while catalyzing innovation in cultural and economic spaces. Increasingly, this network appears to support goal-oriented cognitive processes that could facilitate a major evolutionary transition to a planetary-scale organism. We conclude that the total human ecosystem is more than mere ecosystem, but can be analyzed as an integrated, developmental process, driven by evolutionary mechanisms.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2B916
Subjects
Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Keywords
major evolutionary transitions, Planetary cognition, niche construction, Technosphere, Evolvability, Planetary cognition, Niche construction, Technosphere, evolvability
Dates
Published: 2024-12-02 19:33
License
CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Language:
English
Conflict of interest statement:
None
Data and Code Availability Statement:
All data is publicly available
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.