Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence by James Lovelock

Author:James Lovelock [Lovelock, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241399361
Amazon: 024139936X
Goodreads: 43706493
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2019-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

14

A Shout of Joy

So my last word on the Anthropocene is a shout of joy – joy at the colossal expansion of our knowledge of the world and the cosmos that this age has produced. It is wonderful to live at a time when it has been possible to grow aware of Gaia and I am privileged to have lived amidst a frenzy of scientific research and engineering endeavour.

These are things that have led to an entirely peaceful outcome: the holistic understanding of the Earth and its place in the natural environment of the solar system. The expansion of our knowledge of the Earth as seen from space did much to start us thinking about the harmful consequences of climate change, especially change attributable to the ever-increasing pollution of the surface and atmosphere of the Earth.

The Anthropocene, especially in its later years, has also produced a massive growth of available information. This is obvious to anybody who uses a mobile phone or visits a website. This flood of information would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

Having started out by harvesting the power of sunlight by mining coal, the Anthropocene now harvests the same power and uses its energy to capture and store information. This is, as I have said, a fundamental property of the universe. Our mastery of information should be a source of pride, but we must use the gift wisely to help continue the evolution of all life on Earth so that it can cope with the ever-increasing hazards that inevitably threaten us and Gaia. We alone, among the billions of species that have benefited from the flood of energy from the Sun, are the ones who evolved with the ability to transmute the flood of photons into bits of information gathered in a way that empowers evolution. Our reward is the opportunity to understand something of the universe and ourselves.

If the anthropic cosmological principle rules, as I think it may, then it seems that the prime objective is to convert all of matter and radiation into information. Thanks to the wonders of the age of fire, we have taken the first step. We now stand at a critical moment in this process, the moment when the Anthropocene gives way to the Novacene. The fate of the knowing cosmos hangs upon our response.

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