Call for paper: The Cultural Evolution of Technology: Evidence, Hypothesis and Theory

The folks at CaSEs (Complexity and Socio-Ecological Dynamics) are putting together a satellite session for CSS15 in Tempe, Arizona USA The session, entitled “The Cultural Evolution of Technology”. addresses questions such as “What are the similarities and differences between natural and artificial evolution?” and “Does technology evolve within the same framework than other cultural traits?”

Abstracts due June 22, session is being held on September 30th and October 1st. Check it out!

We (Xavier Rubio-Campillo, Sergi Valverde, and myself) are organising a satellite conference titled “The Cultural Evolution of Technology: Evidence, Hypothesis and Theory” at the annual European Conferences on Complex Systems (CCS), which will be held in the most typical of the European towns: Tempe, Arizona. Yes the conference is now international!

The parallelism between cultural and biological evolution has been noted for a quite a long time (see this blog entry for some  good introductory readings), but its progress have been more of a parallel development amongst different disciplines rather than the result of a research agenda defined by a single unified field of studies. There is good and bad in this. At the cost of sometimes ignoring the achievmenets of other fields, we had the opportunity to investigate similar deeper questions with different materials and methods. This conference will bring together experts from archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, and physics to discuss a variety of topics…

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Evolution of Innovation: Big Brains or Big Data?

There’s a cool conference coming up in Cambridge, UK 26-27 June. It’s not strictly complexity but links very closely to the general topics of Big Data, modelling and evolutionary systems. Also, it’s worth checking out their workshop on Bayesian Inference.  The call for posters closes on 6th June. For more details see their abstract below.

 

Innovation is the key to humans’ success as a species. The human capacity for innovation is unparalleled in the animal kingdom. Yet the process of innovation is still an unresolved mystery. The Evolution of Innovation conference at the Division of Biological Anthropology in Cambridge aims to bring together experts from diverse backgrounds, such as evolutionary anthropology and computer science, to answer the questions: Why do humans innovate? What cognitive processes are involved in innovation? Does innovation require individual genius? Or is innovation only limited by the availability of ideas and information to combine? How will novel information technology change the process of innovation and future cultural evolution? The conference will feature live and online talks and culminate in a panel discussion. All talks and discussions will be streamed live on the web. This event is open to everyone interested in human evolution, cognition, technology and their role in innovation.