There have been two more formal publications on Big History recently: one a journal article – hinted at in the previous post – written in part to honour the memory of Erich Jantsch, the other a book chapter, as well as an informal podcast episode in the FuturePod series.
The article is part of a special issue of the Journal of Big History on Big History and astrobiology, guest edited by Ian Crawford from the University of London. The full reference is:
Voros, J 2019, ‘Big History in its cosmic context’, Journal of Big History, vol. 3, no. 3, Jul, pp. 57-80. doi:10.22339/jbh.v3i3.3340. Special Issue: ‘Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History, and the Social and Intellectual Benefits of the Cosmic Perspective’, IA Crawford (ed.).
The article takes as its starting point the masterwork of Erich Jantsch, The Self-Oganizing Universe, and builds upon it to, as it were, ‘situate’ Big History as part of a wider cosmic context, which includes SETI, astrobiology, and Cosmic Evolution. It is not paywalled, so the doi link above should work without any problems.
The book chapter is part of a book in the Routledge Companion series. The full reference is:
Voros, J 2019, ‘The coming energy transition: What comes after fossil-fuelled civilisation?’, in C Benjamin, E Quaedackers & D Baker (eds), The Routledge companion to Big History, Routledge Companions, Routledge, London, Chap. 21, pp. 456-479. doi:10.4324/9780429299322-22
Unfortunately, this one is paywalled, so unless you have a subscription via Routledge or some equivalent mechanism, the doi link will just take you to an info page containing the Abstract.
The chapter is a light re-working of the “threshold 9” idea first published in 2013, and which formed the last section of the Springer Handbook chapter published in 2017.
I wasn’t intending to re-publish it again, but Craig Benjamin asked if it might be possible to do so, so I said yes. This way, I get to have the last word (chapter) in each of the (3-volume) Big History Anthology, as well as in the Companion to Big History. It seemed like too good an opportunity for a futurist to pass up! 😉
The podcast was part of the FuturePod series, which is a not-for-profit venture started by my foresight colleague and co-conspirator Peter Hayward (aka “Captain Foresight”) and two graduates from the MSF – Rebecca (Bec) Mijat and Meredith (Mendy) Urie. The full reference is:
Voros, J 2019, Big History and Civilisational Foresight, FuturePod, ep. 18, R Mijat (host), FuturePod.org, Apr 7. https://www.futurepod.org/episodes.
In this episode, my former student Bec Mijat interviews me about how I became a futurist, the development of the generic foresight process (GFP) framework, and how I use Big History to think about civilisational-scale foresight, especially the coming civilisational transition. There’s also a bit in there about “surveillance capitalism“. It was a great deal of fun.
You can find out more about FuturePod at www.futurepod.org, where it is also possible to subscribe via Patreon to support it for only $2 a month (hint, hint ;-).
The Voroscope 