Mark Pesce in Brisbane This Thursday

being presented by

Mark Pesce

We are now getting an idea how social networks work. But what are they? Is this the biological substrate of culture? Can we draw a straight line between the earliest Hominoidae (11 million years ago), the "social ape," and ourselves? And, assuming we can, what does it mean that we have, in just the last 24 months, electrified and amplified that innate social capability with new tools? This "hyperconnectivity" is a modern version of an ancient behavior - and the difference is as profound as the transition between animal power and the locomotive.

We are learning how to pool knowledge ever more effectively. Yet, if a recent report in New Scientist is to be believed, knowledge pooling - software running in our cognitive hardware - was the thing which caused the flowering of civilization some 10,000 years ago. Our hardware has been stable for 60,000 years. But our cultural software - hastened by sharing - has been growing by leaps and bounds. The first great leap forward lead to civilization and agriculturalization. We're now at the opening stages of the Next Leap Forward. Can we take what we have learned, even in these early days, and pool that, to refine our capabilities of "hyperintelligence"?

Mark Pesce is an expert in social media, best known for his work blending VR with the Web to create VRML, the distant ancestor of Second Life. Pesce is an author, teacher, inventor, and well-known media personality in Australia. For the last four years he has practiced "digital ethnology", studying the behavioral, cultural and political changes wrought by the new technologies of sharing and communication. Since 2006, Pesce has held an Honorary Appointment to the Digital Cultures Program at the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney.