Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

[bananas]

I haven't had a chance to look at this, but it sounds interesting.

http://blog.nss.org/?p=1687

Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

A new NASA publication, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context (NASA SP-4802) is available as a free 612-page 4MB PDF download. Editors Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella present a series of essays integrating concepts from philosophical, anthropological, and astrobiological disciplines to explore the interdisciplinary questions of cosmic evolution.

A couple of interesting quotes are below.

The first quote is by Howard Bloom (a member of the NSS Board of Governors) from an essay entitled “The Big Burp and the Multiplanetary Mandate”:

<snip>

The second quote is from an essay by Seth Shostak on “The Value of ‘L’ and the Cosmic Bottleneck” (where “L” is the average lifetime of a technological civilization):

<snip>