Stefan Leijnen
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences

N2 Conference 2023
University of California, Berkeley

Artificial intelligence developed within the machine learning paradigm is capable of producing models of unbounded complexity, far beyond the scope of human understanding. Deep learning, attention networks and foundation models have pushed subsequent shifts in this capacity, scaling up model size, data usage and computing power to a point where this complexity has become both a bug and a feature. This has driven human developers and users towards progressively relying more on blind trust, humility towards perceptions of self-autonomy and problems of control.

A common assumption in the machine learning paradigm is that the objective function (the purpose towards which the model optimises) is provided by a human, securing some level of human control of the AI. However, purpose may emerge not only at the level of human individuals but also in collective, mechanical or hybrid organisations.

AI brings radical innovations to our affordances for interacting with large datasets, such as ChatGPT vs. prompt-based internet search. Interfaces will continue to co-evolve with our use of this technology, exploring and transforming human-machine integrated thought and consciousness through existing and new (e.g. neural) interfaces.

In order to help guide these innovations, we need to develop a framework for understanding the emergence and regulation of purpose in living, artificial and hybrid organisations, i.e. in and between biosphere and noosphere. Using this framework, technology can be designed that allows humans to retain and attain the reigns of control as we continue to delegate autonomy and purpose to machines and other organisations.

Learn more about Human Energy and the N2 Conference 2024 on our website.

Sheila Hassell Hughes
Saint Mary’s College of California

N2 Conference 2023
University of California, Berkeley

There are four layers above the earth and four layers below. Sometimes in our dreams and creations we pass through the layers, which are also space and time. In saying the word nindinawemaganidok, or my relatives, we speak of everything that has existed in time, the known and the unknown, the unseen, the obvious, all that lived before or is living now in the worlds above and below.” So begins one of Louise Erdrich’s many novels that weave together Ojibwe and white settler history in the US. This presentation explores Indigenous and feminist resources in Erdrich’s fiction and memoir for thinking about space, time, and the noosphere. Focusing on fundamental relationality, the art of story, and the ongoing presence of the past, I consider her theorization of “traversal,” rather than “transcendence, as a way forward (and back).

Learn more about Human Energy and the N2 Conference 2024 on our website.

Presented by John Smart as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at University of California, Berkeley

JOHN SMART
FORESIGHT SPEAKER, CONSULTANT, AUTHOR
John Smart is a global futurist, foresight consultant, and entrepreneur. He is CEO of Foresight University (Ann Arbor, MI and Los Gatos, CA), a foresight training consultancy. He is also founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a nonprofit focused on understanding and describing human adaptiveness in a world of accelerating technological change.

John’s expertise is in foresight development. His mission is to help leaders, entrepreneurs, and teams to develop best-in-class foresight process, master the Eight Skills of Foresight and Action, and achieve more adaptive futures for themselves, their teams, and their organizations.

Learn more about Human Energy and the N2 Conference 2024 on our website.

Heinrich Volmink
Ubuntu Global Network
University of the Witwatersrand
Stellenbosch University

N2 Conference 2023
University of California, Berkeley

Focus/background: Ubuntu is an African philosophy which broadly translates to mean “a person is a person by virtue of other people” or “I am because we are.” It is thus an ethic that strongly relates to interconnectedness and empathy. In early post-Apartheid South Africa, Ubuntu was championed by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu to help guide the transition to democracy. While the value of Ubuntu for national peace-building is evident, the question of its utility in global governance and (cosmopolitan) citizenship formation needs to be explored, especially in relation to the Noosphere.

Scope/format: A presentation in two parts. Part 1 will provide an overview of Ubuntu and then describe a research-based framework for the application of Ubuntu to global governance and citizenship. Part 2 will describe the example of the Ubuntu United Nations, a global initiative linked to the Ubuntu Global Network, that may provide important lessons for global affairs and the Noosphere.

Methods: Part 1 will be based on past research conducted at the University of Warwick by the presenter that used qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews and analysis of themes. Part 2 will discuss a case study on the first cohort of the Ubuntu United Nations (2021) which included over 600 delegates from more than 180 countries.

Conclusion: This presentation will provide both theoretical and practical considerations of the application of the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which can yield important insights for building a new global ethic in relation to Noopolitik.

Learn more about Human Energy and the N2 Conference 2024 on our website.

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Boris Shoshitaishvili from the Berggruen Institute presents his talk at the N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California Berkeley.

The noosphere is an early (and enduring) paradigm of human "planetary identity" that goes beyond some of the limitations of traditional cosmopolitan thought thanks to its suite of scientific, philosophical, and poetic resonances—such as its analogy to the geochemical system of Earth spheres; its emphasis on mind (noos); and its associations with the ancient "harmony of the spheres". But given the noosphere concept's utopian flavor from its origins in Teilhard and Vernadsky's theories, noosphere thought today runs up against a profound mismatch with context: We are increasingly recognizing that human planetary presence contributes to the creation of other, non-utopian, and "out-of-human-control" planetary spheres—specifically, the "technosphere" and the "infosphere". So a 21st century vision of the noosphere can no longer effectively serve as a utopian eschatology, as the concept had originally. But the noosphere idea still has real value today: as a framing concept for ongoing efforts at harmonizing the technosphere and infosphere with each other and with the biosphere.

Learn more about Human Energy and or N2 Conference at or website. 

Ayeh Kashani
California Institute of Integral Studies

N2 Conference 2023
University of California, Berkeley

This presentation explores the evolutionary trajectory from the Noosphere to the Omega Point: intertwining the insights of Friedrich Schelling with the transformative experiences articulated by Stanislav Grof.

Schelling's focus on the primacy of experience, as opposed to Hegel's purely rational perspective, portrays the emergence of the Absolute or God not merely as a rational process but as an embodied lived experience. Looking to Grof, whose work on Holotropic states and the perinatal process offers a methodology for actualizing these evolutionary experiences, the presentation emphasizes the pivotal role of direct experience in manifesting the birth of the Cosmic Christ within the finite realm.

By integrating philosophical arguments with Grof's methodologies, this talk resonates with the conference themes of "Theology & Spiritual Engagement of/with the Noosphere" and "Philosophy & Ethics of/for the Noosphere." It endeavors to build a bridge between rational comprehension and experiential realization, guiding us closer to the Omega Point.

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Wolfgang Leidhold
Professor of Political Science at the University of Cologne (Germany)

N2 Conference 2023
University of California, Berkeley

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin first conceived the concept of the noosphere in 1923 and later positioned it in his theory of cosmogenesis, running from the geosphere via the biosphere to the noosphere. In my talk, I elaborate on the dynamics of this evolution, taking a closer look at the transition from the present state of the noosphere into the next turn in experience. Brian inspired me to bring together Teilhard’s ideas, Brian's reflections, and mine. I want to present the results here. In my view, the noosphere passes through an experiential evolution, which leads from the Paleolithic to the present day. As I have shown in my book on "The History of Experience" (2023), the noosphere went through nine transformations so far. At each new stage, the way we consciously participate in reality (i.e. the structure of experience) changed, beginning with the transition from intuitive information processing to conscious perception, reaching its preliminary climax with the discovery of consciousness and the unconscious. This raises the question: Has the evolution of experience already reached its end with the recent transition? The answer is no - there is no reason to think so. But where does the journey go now? Brian and I both think that today we are on the threshold of another dimension of experience. The outlines of this next transformation are something Brian and I want to consider and flesh out in dialogue.

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Zann Gill
A founder of GAIL (Generative AI Lab & Library). Former Research Scientist/ Program Developer at NASA.

N2 Conference 2023
University of California, Berkeley 

Two extreme views contend in the A.I. debate: First: A.I. will drive the human species extinct. Second: A.I. will be a great equalizer and enabler. Human perception of the extinction hypothesis was fact checked by Melanie Mitchell: 50% of AI researchers believe there’s a 10% chance that AI will drive the human species extinct. Those now in control fear AI as “an alien gone out of control.” In contrast, the global open source community models collaborative autonomy, a distributed indie network rapidly iterating, innovating, and evolving, a noosphere emerging to empower humanity. As a grad student, I was inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s pre-Internet concept for World Game, designed to be played in university gymnasia, where a 75 foot Dymaxion Map of the world was laid out as a gameboard on the gymnasium floor. When the public Internet made a global, persistent “gameboard” possible, I started earthDECKS, where DECKS stands for Distributed, Evolving Collaborative Knowledge System and also evokes “decks” of story cards in a human - machine iterative learning loop that can manifest collaborative intelligence, the 21st century incarnation of what Teilhard de Chardin called the noosphere and Buckminster Fuller called World Game. With the surge of A.I., I saw the missing puzzle piece to grow and evolve a global platform to track local progress toward addressing the grave crises of life on Earth today. A.I. is a bandwagon with momentum to drive a collaborative intelligence initiative, attracting global attention, mobilizing fear to kickstart action and motivating construction of a next generation social network to support collaborative intelligence, using A.I. to scale.

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Beyond Sovereignty and Submission: The complex role of the modern individual within the noosphere

Presented by Ari Makridakis as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at University of California, Berkeley

Alongside the emergence of the noosphere, the modern period has witnessed the birth of another, radically new planetary power: the autonomous, psychological individual. In this presentation, I will explore the relationship between these two titanic forces, asking what role sovereign, self-oriented individuals are meant to play in the creation of the noosphere.

Within the academic community, this relationship is described in wildly different ways. In one camp, thinkers such as Brian Swimme proclaim that the rise of the noosphere depends crucially on the unique sensitivities and personal passions of self-empowered individuals. From this perspective, the flourishing of the modern individual self and that of the noosphere would appear to be synergistic — and even mutually implicated — processes. According other scholars, however, the modern self's ever-increasing fixation on personal fulfillment and self-centered satiation represent the largest impediment to the birth of the noosphere. To avoid becoming a cancerous growth within the Earth's nervous system, modern individuals must therefore relinquish their narrow, self-interested desires and allow their activities to be governed by planetary goals instead.

In this talk, I will examine how the framework of systems theory can shed light on these divergent views. Drawing on the work of Arthur Koestler, Gregory Bateson, Stuart Kauffman, and Alicia Juarrero, I will attempt to offer a more nuanced view of the relationship between increasingly empowered individuals and an increasingly integrated planetary mind.

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Evolving the Self: Cognitive Sciences, the Extended Mind, and the Noosphere

Presented by Abre Fournier (https://www.abrefournier.com/) and Brian Thomas Swimme at the N2 Conference 2023, University of California, Berkeley

Through the span of the scientific and industrial revolutions of the past two centuries, the Western conception of the self, anchored in Cartesian dualistic metaphysics, has predominantly viewed humans as entities distinct from an ostensibly inert universe. Increasingly challenged, such perspectives are no longer viable. Contemporary advancements in physical and cognitive sciences have begun to dismantle these assumptions, recognizing matter as life-generating and mind-generating.

The emerging trend of research in externalist views of the mind accentuates the mind's existence across multiple dimensions. Humans are embodied living organisms, situated across a matrix of environments. Our discussion of human beings as self-organizing dynamical systems brings forth the process of being that refers to the relational brain-body-world dynamics of the mind. Dynamical embodiment extends the realm of the mind beyond mere neurological boundaries, capturing the entirety of an individual's existence—from the intricacies of synaptic networks to broader societal and planetary interconnections.

Philosophically, these views point to a diverse, evolving self or dynamical selfing, argued on the basis of all aspects of self-consciousness being constructed, evolving within the ecosystems of personal relationships that include the intersubjective interactions with the world, a planet of living beings, and things. With this understanding, we suggest we are in the process of constructing a "noospheric self," where noosphere refers to human thought which now envelops the Earth. We assert that this transformation of self-consciousness—from the selves of the modern era developing into dynamical noospheric selves—represents the emergence of a new form of humanity.

Learn more at https://humanenergy.io