The acceleration of cultural change : from ancestors to algorithms / R. Alexander Bentley and Michael J. O'Brien ; foreword by John Maeda.

Author
Bentley, R. Alexander, 1970- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2017]
Description
xvii, 156 pages : illustrations, map ; 21 cm

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Firestone Library - Stacks HM626 .B473 2017 Browse related items Request

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    Writer of foreword
    Series
    Summary note
    From our hunter-gatherer days, we humans evolved to be excellent throwers, chewers, and long-distance runners. We are highly social, crave Paleolithic snacks, and display some gendered difference resulting from mate selection. But we now find ourselves binge-viewing, texting while driving, and playing Minecraft. Only the collective acceleration of cultural and technological evolution explains this development. The evolutionary psychology of individuals --the drive for "food and sex"-- explains some of our current habits, but our evolutionary success, Alex Bentley and Mike O'Brien explain, lies in our ability to learn cultural know-how and to teach it to the next generation. 00Bentley and O'Brien examine the broad and shallow model of cultural evolution seen today in the science of networks, prediction markets, and the explosion of digital information. They suggest that in the future, artificial intelligence could be put to work to solve the problem of information overload, learning to integrate concepts over the vast idea space of digitally stored information.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 129-149) and index.
    Contents
    • Preface: in the middleton theater
    • Traditional minds
    • Change is not norman
    • Check the transmission
    • Cultural trees
    • Bayesians
    • Traditions and horizons
    • Networks
    • Hindsighted
    • Moore is better?
    • Free willy.
    ISBN
    • 9780262036955 ((hardcover : alkaline paper))
    • 0262036959 ((hardcover : alkaline paper))
    LCCN
    2017006483
    OCLC
    978286295
    Other standard number
    • 40027590334
    Statement on language in description
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