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Kevin Kelly -- The Technium

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What Nova Spivack suggests here is that the path from random population to meta-individual is a path of increasing structure. The parts are more tightly bound in relationships, and as they gain in interdependence, the whole advances to the next phase.

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In other words, Smith and Szathmary say that evolution is the continued, graduated progression in which smaller units form larger, higher level units, and then those new meta-individuals start to form a new group, where each meta-individual is a mere individual.

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Smith and Szathmary say that evolution is the continued, graduated progression in which smaller units form larger, higher level units, and then those new meta-individuals start to form a new group, where each meta-individual is a mere individual

Highlighted by eyalnow

Robert Wright, writing in "Nonzero" argues that the evolution of humanity is one long progression of increasing cooperation, starting from the first cell of life, where both "sides" win.

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He suggests we can see where evolution is going by imagining a next phase which will increases the span of cooperation further.

That of course, would be the ninth transition,

From human society to a global super-organism containing both humans and their machines.

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For the ninth transition in life's evolution -- the transition to a planetary level organization of humans and machines -- we should expect to see:

1. Increased cooperation among humans, benefiting both humans and the OM.
2. Increased span of interdependence. Planetary scale, things happening and enduring longer or quicker than before.
3. Increase complexity of informational flow. New ways of connecting, organizing, relating not possible before.
4. Emergence of a new level of control. An innovation (like DNA, or spinal cord, government) that takes control of functions in order to benefit constituents non-zero-ly.

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