Can we trust stories about the future? Join historian and bestselling author David Christian as he offers an introduction to the strange world of the future.
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This lecture was recorded at the Ri on 20 November 2023.
Every second of our lives - whether we're looking both ways before crossing the street, celebrating the birth of a baby, or moving to a new city - we must cope with an unknowable future by telling stories about what will happen next.
What we think we know about it at all scales, from the predictive mechanisms of single-celled organisms and tomato plants to the merging of colossal galaxies billions of years from now. Drawing together science, history and philosophy from a huge range of places and times, David will explore how we prepare for uncertain futures, including the future of human evolution, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and more.
For all those curious about what the world could look like in the next hundred years and what the solutions to the biggest challenges facing us all could look like, this is an unmissable event.
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David Christian is a Professor Emeritus at Macquarie University, where he was formerly a Distinguished Professor of History and the director of the Big History Institute. He cofounded the Big History Project with Bill Gates, his Coursera MOOCs are popular around the world, and he is cocreator of the Macquarie University Big History School.
He has delivered keynotes at conferences around the world, including the Davos World Economic Forum, and his TED Talk has been viewed more than twelve million times. He is the author of numerous books and articles, as well as the New York Times bestseller Origin Story.
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