{"product_id":"the-acceleration-of-cultural-change-from-ancestors-to-algorithms-paperback","title":"The Acceleration of Cultural Change: From Ancestors to Algorithms - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eR. Alexander Bentley\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eMichael J. O'Brien\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eJohn Maeda\u003c\/b\u003e (Foreword by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHow culture evolves through algorithms rather than knowledge inherited from ancestors.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom our hunter-gatherer days, we humans evolved to be excellent throwers, chewers, and long-distance runners. We are highly social, crave Paleolithic snacks, and display some gendered difference resulting from mate selection. But we now find ourselves binge-viewing, texting while driving, and playing \u003ci\u003eMinecraft\u003c\/i\u003e. Only the collective acceleration of cultural and technological evolution explains this development. The evolutionary psychology of individuals--the drive for \"food and sex\"--explains some of our current habits, but our evolutionary success, Alex Bentley and Mike O'Brien explain, lies in our ability to learn cultural know-how and to teach it to the next generation. Today, we are following social media bots as much as we are learning from our ancestors. We are radically changing the way culture evolves. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBentley and O'Brien describe how the transmission of culture has become vast and instantaneous across an Internet of people and devices, after millennia of local ancestral knowledge that evolved slowly. Long-evolved cultural knowledge is aggressively discounted by online algorithms, which prioritize popularity and recency. If children are learning more from \u003ci\u003eMinecraft\u003c\/i\u003e than from tradition, this is a profound shift in cultural evolution. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBentley and O'Brien examine the broad and shallow model of cultural evolution seen today in the science of networks, prediction markets, and the explosion of digital information. They suggest that in the future, artificial intelligence could be put to work to solve the problem of information overload, learning to integrate concepts over the vast idea space of digitally stored information.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eR. Alexander Bentley is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee and coauthor of \u003ci\u003eI'll Have What She's Having: Mapping Social Behavior\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Acceleration of Cultural Change: From Ancestors to Algorithms \u003c\/i\u003e(both published by the MIT Press). \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMichael J. O'Brien is Provost and Professor of History at Texas A\u0026amp;M University-San Antonio and the coauthor of \u003ci\u003eI'll Have What She's Having: Mapping Social Behavior\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Acceleration of Cultural Change: From Ancestors to Algorithms\u003c\/i\u003e (both published by the MIT Press). \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAn internationally recognized leader at the intersection of design and technology, John Maeda is Executive Vice President\/Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient. He was the 16th President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He is the author of \u003ci\u003eDesign by Numbers\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Laws of Simplicity, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eRedesigning Leadership\u003c\/i\u003e, all published by The MIT Press.\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 176\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.41 x 8 x 5.38 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 21, 2024\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51776120520992,"sku":"9780262551977","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/ebb40b3637b58456ac429c9635810c9d.webp?v=1780472764","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/the-acceleration-of-cultural-change-from-ancestors-to-algorithms-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}