Tag Archives: evolution

Evo Devo Universe

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Evo Devo Universe (EDU) is a global community of theoretical and applied physicists, chemists, biologists, cognitive and social scientists, computer scientists, technologists, philosophers, information theorists, complexity scholars and systems theorists who are interested in better characterizing the relationship and difference between evolutionary and developmental processes in the universe and its subsystems. The project originated from John Smart and Clément Vidal in January 2008.

The first international EDU conference was held in Paris in October 2008. The second international EDU conference is planned in 2013 at the East Coast, USA.

EDU is looking for researchers to collaborate on investigating on free energy rate density (FERD) and its larger human implications, as described in a brief research project overview, created by Clément Vidal.

Cosmic Evolution

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Last update : July 17, 2013
Eric Chaisson defined the grand scenario of cosmic evolution as follows :

cosmic evolution = physical evolution + biological evolution + cultural evolution

Eric Chaisson segmented the physical evolution in five epochs :

  • Particulate evolution
  • Galactic evolution
  • Stellar evolution
  • Planetary evolution
  • Chemical evolution
Cosmic Evolution : Time Arrow by Eric Chaisson

From Big Bang to Humankind : Time Arrow by Eric Chaisson

Eric Chaisson uses an time arrow to highlight salient features of cosmic history, from the Big Bang to the present, encompassing 14 Giga Years (Ga). He defined the concept of free energy rate density as the amount of energy that flows through a certain amount of mass during a certain period of time. The concept of power density was not new, but Eric Chaisson has been the first to make a systematic comparison of these values all across nature.

Eric Chaisson’s understanding of the cosmic evolution is related to the Big History.

The following list shows links to websites with further informations about cosmic evolution:

Big History and ChronoZoom

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Last update : July 17, 2013
Big History is a field of historical study that examines history on large scales across long time frames through a multidisciplinary approach, to understand the integrated history of the cosmos, earth, life, and humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods. Big History evolved from interdisciplinary studies in the mid-20th century, some of the first efforts were Cosmic Evolution at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University and Universal History in the Soviet Union.

An International Big History Association (IBHA) was founded in 2010. The same year, Walter Alvarez and Roland Saekow from the department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley, developed ChronoZoom, an online program that visualizes time on the broadest possible scale from the Big Bang to the present day. A beta version of ChromoZoom 2 in HTML5 was released in March 2012 by Outercurve Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports open-source software.

In 2011, Bill Gates and David Christian started The Big History Project to enable the global teaching of big history. Seven schools have been selected for the initial classroom pilot phase of the project. IBHA is one of the partners of the project. Educators can register to participate in the beta program of the Big History Project. At the TED talks in March 2011, David Christian narrated a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes.

Macquaire University has launched a Big History Institute as part of the Big History Project. Big History is teached since 1994 at the University of Amsterdam by Fred Spier.

A list of links to great websites illustrating different epochs (particulate, galactic, stellar, planetary, chemical, biological, culturel) of the Big History is shown hereafter :

Internet Evolution

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Last update : October 8, 2012
Where is there and how do we get there from here ? was the topic of a panel on Internet Evolution, organized by the Internet Society at IETF 81 in Quebec, Canada.

Evolution occurs as a response to a stimulus. The panel explored different paths that Internet evolution could follow:

  • Natural evolution – letting market forces prevail
  • Top-down regulatory – return to the telco regime
  • Clean slate – repealing the laws of Internet physics
  • Or ?

The following five questions have been answered by seven contributors : Kenjiro Cho, Alissa Cooper, Jon Crowcroft, Geoff Huston, Bill St. Arnaud, Joe Touch and Jonathan Zittrain.

  1. Internet and Innovation : The Internet itself was an innovation and it has served as an open platform for unprecedented innovations in networking, applications and services for years. The data provides evidence that the Internet is becoming ‘flatter’ (increasingly direct interconnection of content and consumer). Is this necessarily part of a trend towards a less-innovative platform ?
  2. P2P Traffic : Is the relative decline in P2P traffic volume indicative of the triumph of business models over technology ?
  3. Dominance of Application Protocols : What is your perception of the import of the increasing dominance of a handful of application protocols—simplification ? ossification ? something else ?
  4. Internet Evolution Trends : What do these observable trends in Internet evolution mean for the future of the Internet ?
  5. Impact on The Future of the Internet : Any other observations or interpretations of these reports in terms of impact and import for the future of the Internet that you would like to share ?

The following links provide further informations about the Internet evolution :

What will the Internet look like In 10 years ?

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The Internet Society engaged in a scenario planning exercise to reveal plausible evolutions of the Internet in the future. Based upon the two questions :

  • Will the world embrace or resist the open Internet model ?
  • Will the Command and Control or the Distributed and Decentralized model be more succesful ?

These two questions defined four quadrants, which led to four very different stories about how the world might develop over the next eight to ten years :

Internet evolution scenarios

All of these stories contain some elements of the Internet of today. The challenge for everyone is to contribute to help the Internet to evolve in a direction like the scenario called The Common Pool.