Roughly 13.7 billion years ago, the universe exploded into existence in what many contempary scientists refer to as “the big bang.”  As subatomic particles expelled in all directions, they began to form atoms – the building blocks of matter.  Eventually globs of ‘stuff,’ namely hydrogen, compounded into stars.  Around 4.5 billion years ago, the accretion of Earth began to form, our very own host planet.  This paved way initially to simple cell prokaryotes, simple cell bacteria.  Complex cells, or eukaryotes, followed after.  Forming nearly 2 billion years ago, they are arguably the first forms of life on Earth.  2.5 million years ago we see the first appearance of the genus homo which eventually evolved into what we currently call humans some 200,000 years ago.

You can begin to see the telescopic nature of evolution.

And then you introduce the means of evolution of societies and cultures.  9,000 years ago, we moved from a hunter-gather based society to an aggricultural based, which allowed greater populations to form, as well as a more stable living for collective societies.  Slowly, we began to develop more intric theories on discerning the world around us with the scientific revolution taking place some 400 years ago.  Equiped with better theories and the foundation of knowledge of the structure of the world and universe around us, the industrial revolution took over, thus effectively reconstructing the physical world around us 200 years ago.

What we are beginning to see here isn’t linear growth, but rather exponetial proliferation.  What does this mean for the future?

The concept was first introduced to me by Ray Kurzweil, an avid futurist.  We’ve seen evolution take place across a variety of mediums, namely biological and cultural.  The next age of evolution is informational.  We are beginning to streamline information effortlessly and instanteously.  Even today, IBM just announced a major advancement in quatum computing that contain billions of bits of information in the fraction of a second.  So great, in fact, that they contain more information that there are atoms in the universe.

Evolution is literally going to be taking place in front of our eyes at an alarming speed that we begin to see it manifest within our lifetime.  We can expect to see an integration of nanotechnology and human biological makeup, contructed furturistic ‘cyborg’ constructs.  The implications are g and the potential is unfathomable.  We can only help but wait in eager excitment.