The Next Threshold
Driving Question: What’s the next threshold?
We don’t have a crystal ball that can show us the future, but we do have the lessons of Big History to help us predict what might happen. What will your vision of the future be?
Learning Objectives:
- Compare different possibilities for the future.
- Propose a vision of the future based on new understandings of the past.
Vocab Terms:
- collective learning
- complexity
- conscious
- entropy
- threshold of increasing complexity
Make sure students have their completed Visions of the Future closing activities from this unit. This is the moment when students will look back at their answers to decide which one will have the most significant impact for future humans.
No one can see the future, but with some educated guesses we can start preparing to create the future we all want. That’s your task with this opener!
Before students decide on the ingredients and Goldilocks Conditions for Threshold 9, review the previous thresholds with them. This will help them formulate the precise ingredients that come together under “just right” conditions for their future threshold.
An OER Project teacher chose the podcast activity as her Unit 7 must-do because “it’s a natural capstone for the course—it asks students to synthesize everything they’ve learned about complexity, thresholds, and collective learning and then make a forward-looking argument. The podcast format tends to produce more polished thinking than a written prompt alone because students know they’ll be ‘performing’ for an audience.”
We’re bringing in a special guest to help us speculate on the future: David Christian, whose ideas were the origin of this very course! See if you agree with his threshold proposal, and then create your own.
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Guiding Questions
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Before you read
Preview the questions below, and then skim the article. Be sure to look at the section headings and any images.
While you read
Look for answers to these questions:
- Why should our Universe be getting less complex?
- What are some examples of humans making conscious decisions?
- What does David Christian mean when he says that our planet is becoming conscious?
- What are the two big advantages collective learning gives us?
- How would you answer David Christian’s question about whether there are other conscious planets in the Universe?
After you read
Respond to these questions: Do you agree with David Christian’s proposed next threshold? Why or why not?
Is this it? The end? It just might be! But remember: Every ending is always just the beginning of something new.
Extend your students’ understanding of how topics such as cities, technology, and humans relate to the 13.8-billion-year history of the Universe. You could also allow your students to choose a different topic that interests them and have students decide on the type of product they would like to create to showcase their learning.
Speculating on the most important future development will help prepare you for what’s to come.