For those unfamiliar it is an idea developed by a highly regarded but at times rambling author and psychedelic philosopher, Terrence McKenna. His original theory that periods of ‘novelty’ in history could be arranged into a mathematical model that would provide predictions has been thoroughly discredited (link). But, strip away the faulty mathematical justifications, all the grandiose claims and new wave nonsense that has been tacked on and I feel there is something to be said about Novelty Theory.
This much is relatively uncontested: there have been three great epochs of human technological advancement: 30,000 years ago mankind developed agriculture, which led to food surpluses, specialized professions, and cities. 350 years ago it was mechanization, which led to assembly lines, automobiles, and even larger cities. Just 50 years ago digitalization arrived which is vastly accelerating the speed and ease of communication.
30,000, 350, 50; McKenna saw this exponential increase in novel advances as a sign that big things in technology are going to start happening at a very rapid pace. Could nanotech, biotech, A.I., or something still around the bend send us off into another reality altering path? More importantly, could we handle it if it did happen?
Or, is this just the musings of a stoned alchemists with a poor grasp of history?
Something tells me this crowd is going to opt for the latter.
Agriculture originated 30,000 years ago? I thought it was more like 8000 BCE.
Is he using some sort of different definition of agriculture?
30,000 BCE is around the border between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic which (I think) was marked by a rapid change in the variety of stone tools produced.
The only figures I could find agree with yours of 10,000 years. So McKenna is off considerably. But, 10,000, 350, 50 could still turn out to be the start of an exponential decrease in novelty occurrence. So the hypothesis of his theory may remain intact.
Mods, once again I’ve managed to choose the wrong thread for my OP. Could you move this to GD? I’m a bonehead, sorry.
:smack:
Three points on a graph is not enough to extrapolate anything, especially when the error of the points is so great and the points themselves are so debatable. We may be due for great changes, but if we are, it’s a lucky guess on McKenna’s part, or simply that he reads Discover magazine and Popular Science along with the rest of us.
It is true that for the vast majority of the history of our species, we were pre-agrarian hunter-gatherers. It is also true that the agrarian period has become something else already after a mere 10,000 years. The shift in lifestyles from hunter-gatherer to agrarian created a fairly stable lifestyle that didn’t change markedly for most of those 10,000 years (certainly human footsteps on the moon and nuclear physics would not easily extrapolate from any of the prior millennia).
The theorist you have mentioned may be out to lunch in general but this much is readily understood, and by many of us who have never read his works. I’ve described us as a “species in transition” often in political theory writing. (i.e., that our social systems are the products of agrarian culture and in many ways are less and less appropriate).
Extrapolating mathematically strikes me as akin to fortune cookies though.
Nothing rock solid, but 3 points is the bare minimum for establishing a pattern. This isn’t entirely mathematical either; Novelty Theory is based primarily on historical analysis.
Listening to Terrence McKenna is fascinating, but I always felt that his theory was likely a wish fulfillment fantasy. I confess I don’t know the details, but remain skeptical.
I thought it was more like 8000 BCE.