Monkey Business — What apes and New World monkeys tell us about the origins o...William Hall
Presentation explores the biology and behavior of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, and our distant Brazilian cousins, the capuchin monkeys, to understand the origins of human technologies and the cultural accumulation of knowledge. The presentation links to a number of video clips demonstrating the transfer of knowledge about the sophisticated use of tools by non-human primates.
Coda: The sting in the tail - Meetup session 23William Hall
This is the last of 23 presentations in a series introducing and outlining my hypertext book project, "Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation - A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge". The project explores the interactions of technology and cognition in the extraordinary evolutionary history of the human species.
A coda is a generally short and more or less independent passage added to the end of a composition so as to reinforce the sense of conclusion. Here I consider the question raised in the title of this Meetup series - what does the understanding of the roles of cognitive technologies developed in this book tell us about the future of humanity? I see three possible scenarios, only one of which is moderately benign.
Which of these will come to pass depends critically on how successful we are at understanding who we are and applying the tremendous body of knowledge we have assembled over our history.
The Epistemology of Living Organizations ― Theoretical Foundations and Practi...William Hall
Here I try to answer some questions from my corporate career, where I have concluded that organizations are complex adaptive living systems. The answers are the result of more than 10 years of research trying to combine my understanding of evolutionary biology and corporate experience. Five topics are addressed:
o Karl Popper’s evolutionary epistemology
o Defining life - autopoiesis
o Human biology
- Adaptation
- Genetic vs cultural heredity (knowledge transfer)
- Origins of culture and social organization
o Theoretical foundations of organizational knowledge
o Putting theory into practice
Monkey Business — What apes and New World monkeys tell us about the origins o...William Hall
Presentation explores the biology and behavior of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, and our distant Brazilian cousins, the capuchin monkeys, to understand the origins of human technologies and the cultural accumulation of knowledge. The presentation links to a number of video clips demonstrating the transfer of knowledge about the sophisticated use of tools by non-human primates.
Coda: The sting in the tail - Meetup session 23William Hall
This is the last of 23 presentations in a series introducing and outlining my hypertext book project, "Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation - A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge". The project explores the interactions of technology and cognition in the extraordinary evolutionary history of the human species.
A coda is a generally short and more or less independent passage added to the end of a composition so as to reinforce the sense of conclusion. Here I consider the question raised in the title of this Meetup series - what does the understanding of the roles of cognitive technologies developed in this book tell us about the future of humanity? I see three possible scenarios, only one of which is moderately benign.
Which of these will come to pass depends critically on how successful we are at understanding who we are and applying the tremendous body of knowledge we have assembled over our history.
The Epistemology of Living Organizations ― Theoretical Foundations and Practi...William Hall
Here I try to answer some questions from my corporate career, where I have concluded that organizations are complex adaptive living systems. The answers are the result of more than 10 years of research trying to combine my understanding of evolutionary biology and corporate experience. Five topics are addressed:
o Karl Popper’s evolutionary epistemology
o Defining life - autopoiesis
o Human biology
- Adaptation
- Genetic vs cultural heredity (knowledge transfer)
- Origins of culture and social organization
o Theoretical foundations of organizational knowledge
o Putting theory into practice
Interlude (1): Autopoiesis & physics of life, cognition and knowledge - Meetu...William Hall
This is the 13th of 23 presentations in a series introducing and outlining my hypertext book project, "Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation - A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge. The project explores the interactions of technology and cognition in the extraordinary evolutionary history of the human species. This session begins a theoretical "interlude" providing the basis for a more speculative view of the cognitive evolution of Homo sapiens, where the remainder of the book will benefit from a deeper understanding of the interrelated theories of life and knowledge as presented in the next two sessions.
My work on the book came to a halt when I tried to connect my ideas with the organizational and professional literature on the cognitive interactions of individuals and their cognitive technologies with knowledge, cognition and technologies at the organizational level. I understood organizations from a biological point of view rather than from a sociological point of view, where these views were further grounded in fundamentally different understandings of what knowledge is. It took several years and the publication of several papers before I thought I fully understood the details and implications of the different paradigms of organizational understanding. Only then could this book be finished. This interlude in the evolutionary history of humans and technology explores the fundamental relationships between knowledge and life at several levels of biological organization from single cells to complex social entities such as corporations, states and nations and how cognition plays out at each of these levels.
Topics discussed in this session include:
● Life is a thermodynamically dissipative process driven by the transport of energy from sources to sinks
● The emergence and evolution of knowledge is an inseparable part of the emergence of life and the evolution of living things
● The importance of and mechanisms for sharing knowledge in the evolutionary process
● Understanding the differences and relationships between living and explicit knowledge
● Culture and the sharing of knowledge at higher levels of organization
"In the footsteps of the great explorers" - Maarten SchäferCoolBrands People
I’m cycling through Amsterdam’s historic centre, a UNESCO world heritage site and an enduring testimony to the city’s rich history. During the Golden Age in the 17th century, Amsterdam’s port was at the centre of a global trade network, with ships sailing to Asia, Africa, Brazil and the Americas, and merchants trading goods across Europe
Interlude (1): Autopoiesis & physics of life, cognition and knowledge - Meetu...William Hall
This is the 13th of 23 presentations in a series introducing and outlining my hypertext book project, "Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation - A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge. The project explores the interactions of technology and cognition in the extraordinary evolutionary history of the human species. This session begins a theoretical "interlude" providing the basis for a more speculative view of the cognitive evolution of Homo sapiens, where the remainder of the book will benefit from a deeper understanding of the interrelated theories of life and knowledge as presented in the next two sessions.
My work on the book came to a halt when I tried to connect my ideas with the organizational and professional literature on the cognitive interactions of individuals and their cognitive technologies with knowledge, cognition and technologies at the organizational level. I understood organizations from a biological point of view rather than from a sociological point of view, where these views were further grounded in fundamentally different understandings of what knowledge is. It took several years and the publication of several papers before I thought I fully understood the details and implications of the different paradigms of organizational understanding. Only then could this book be finished. This interlude in the evolutionary history of humans and technology explores the fundamental relationships between knowledge and life at several levels of biological organization from single cells to complex social entities such as corporations, states and nations and how cognition plays out at each of these levels.
Topics discussed in this session include:
● Life is a thermodynamically dissipative process driven by the transport of energy from sources to sinks
● The emergence and evolution of knowledge is an inseparable part of the emergence of life and the evolution of living things
● The importance of and mechanisms for sharing knowledge in the evolutionary process
● Understanding the differences and relationships between living and explicit knowledge
● Culture and the sharing of knowledge at higher levels of organization
"In the footsteps of the great explorers" - Maarten SchäferCoolBrands People
I’m cycling through Amsterdam’s historic centre, a UNESCO world heritage site and an enduring testimony to the city’s rich history. During the Golden Age in the 17th century, Amsterdam’s port was at the centre of a global trade network, with ships sailing to Asia, Africa, Brazil and the Americas, and merchants trading goods across Europe