Hunter-Gatherer

The Compressed Present

Frank Diana Systemic Change , , , , , , , , , , ,

THE BIO-INTELLIGENT SIGNATURE: A LENS ON THE CURRENT AGE

The present moment is shaped by three converging streams of intelligence: machine intelligence, biological intelligence, and planetary intelligence. These are the same sources that form what I have described elsewhere as polyintelligence — cognition distributed across humans, machines, and nature. Each stream is advancing on its own, but their deeper significance appears in how they now influence one another. Artificial intelligence extends cognition beyond the human mind. Synthetic biology brings design and computation into living systems. And the planet — long treated only as a resource base — is increasingly recognized as a source of insight. Through biomimetics, natural systems provide design principles refined through evolution: circularity instead of waste, resilience through diversity, and adaptation through constant sensing and feedback.

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Crossing The Threshold

Frank Diana Systemic Change , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Civilization’s great shifts are the moments when continuity fails and a new order takes shape. Each historical age reached a point where the old logic could no longer hold, and pressures converged into a transformative release. By examining four major transitions – from Hunter–Gatherer to Agricultural, Agricultural to Axial, Axial to Renaissance, and Renaissance to Industrial – we can see how rising Total Systemic Domain Score (TSDS) and changing Activation Dispersion (AD) signaled that a threshold was near. Some transitions unfolded slowly over millennia, while others struck within a few centuries. In each case, the build-up of energy and imbalance hit a critical point, and society crossed into an irreversible new configuration that only in hindsight feels inevitable.

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What The Gauges Reveal Across The Ages

Frank Diana Systemic Change , , , , , , , , , , ,

Over the first seven posts, we explored the seven domains that shape civilization, the forces that move within them, the thresholds that mark major transitions, and the drivers that push systems toward those turning points. We also built two gauges that help make those movements visible. TSDS shows how much energy sits across the seven domains. AD shows how that energy is arranged. Together, they help us see the internal structure of an age: how active its domains were, how evenly that activity spread, and how tightly the system was coupled. With that groundwork in place, we can now use the gauges to trace the long arc of history and examine how pressure accumulated across major ages of civilization.

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How The Gauges Were Built: Making Systemic Pressure Legible

Frank Diana Systemic Change , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Over the first six posts, I built the foundation needed to understand how civilizations change. I explored the seven domains that shape collective life, the forces that move within them, the thresholds that mark historical turning points, and the three drivers that push systems toward those moments. With that groundwork in place, I introduced a pair of gauges that make those movements easier to see. In this post, I describe the gauges in greater detail. TSDS reflects how much energy sits across the seven domains. AD shows how that energy is arranged. Before we apply these gauges to the long arc of history, we need to explain how they were built. Every measure rests on a set of choices. This post walks through those choices in a way that keeps the gauges intuitive while grounding them in the history they aim to describe.

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Reading The Pulse Of A Civilization In Motion

Frank Diana Systemic Change , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The first five posts laid the foundation for understanding why the world feels dense, fast, and tightly connected. We explored the sense that something in the operating logic of civilzation is shifting. We looked at phase transitions, the four-stage pattern that repeats across history, and the seven domains that structure civilization. The last post introduced the three deep drivers that push civilizations across thresholds: growing convergence, system-shaping technologies, and the acceleration of knowledge. Taken together, they help explain why pressure builds, why systems couple, and why some ages move differently than others.

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How Big Shifts Unfold — And Where We Are Now

Frank Diana Future Scenarios , , , , , , , , , , ,

RECAP FROM THE SERIES SO FAR

In the first post, I explored why so many parts of life feel unsettled at the same time: all seven domains of civilization are active and amplifying one another. In the second post, I described the tightening that happens before major shifts — the compression that makes events feel more connected, faster, and harder to absorb. This post turns to the deeper structure beneath these shifts. When we look at history, we see a repeating pattern in how civilizations change shape.

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When Systems Turn Over

Frank Diana Our Emerging Future , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post marks the beginning of a new series on systemic change — an exploration of how civilizations transform at the deepest level. Over the coming weeks, we’ll trace the rhythm of history, examine the forces that drive reordering, and explore why this moment may be the first time in history when every domain of human life is active at once. Each post will build on the last, revealing how science, technology, society, geopolitics, economics, philosophy, and the environment are converging toward a new operating logic for civilization.

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From Campfires To Code: The Systemic Shifts That Shaped Humanity

Frank Diana Future Scenarios , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Human history has been anything but linear. While centuries can pass with relative stability, there are rare moments where everything changes—moments where converging forces across domains give rise to entirely new paradigms. These are not just periods of change. They are systemic transitions that reshape how we live, work, relate, and make sense of the world.

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The Next Human Revolution: Will Technology Change Who We Are?

Frank Diana The Third Tipping Point , , , , , , , , , ,

Throughout human history, there have been only a handful of moments so transformative that they redefined what it means to be human. These tipping points were not merely technological breakthroughs or changes in societal norms – they were profound inflection points, moments when the trajectory of civilization bent so sharply that the “before” and the “after” became fundamentally different worlds.

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The Journey Of Humanity

Frank Diana Books , , , , , , , , ,

Since the dawn of the nineteenth century, a split second compared to the span of human existence, life expectancy has more than doubled, and per capita incomes have soared twenty-fold in the most developed regions of the world, and fourteen-fold on Planet Earth as a whole

Oded Galor – The Journey of Humanity
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The Journey: A Growth Of Knowledge

Frank Diana My Book , , , , , , , ,

My previous posts launched a series that will tell the full story of my reimagined future. Described as a journey through the looking glass, the story began with a description of the series title and a look backward in time. The series continues, with each post featuring a piece of our journey. We explored the tipping points of history in the last post. In this post, I explore the role that knowledge has played in shaping that history.

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