How Electricity Is Affecting Human Evolution

OLLI at BCC Distinguished Speakers Series
Sponsored by Kimball Farms Life Care 

How Electricity Is Affecting Human Evolution

Tuesday, January 13 at 2:00 p.m. ET

Hybrid: In-person at BCC and Online via Zoom

Free and Open to the Public

If you read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Juval Noah Harari, or are interested in human evolution, then don’t miss this provocative talk. Learn about what Sapiens overlooked, the most momentous development in recent  history: using electricity. Just as fire enabled the evolution of our prehistoric ancestors, electricity is enabling our ongoing evolution today. Electricity is the new fire. Fire in a wire.

A new species of human is emerging, not in some imagined future, but now. We use electricity for everything, we cannot exist without it. We no longer live in a Darwinian state of nature ruled by “the survival of the fittest.” In the electrified world that has become our natural habitat, human actions can override natural selection. We are taking control of our own evolution. We can, and we must, if we are to survive existential threats like climate change.

Steven Reed Nelson is the author of Fire in a Wire: Electricity Empowers Human Evolution Beyond Homo Sapiens. “A bold thesis ... provocative.” --  Chronogram Magazine. “Nelson is a free-ranging thinker.” -- Berkshire Fine Arts. “His theory is worth reading.” -- The Berkshire Eagle.

OLLI at BCC is sponsored in part by Berkshire Health Systems