Day 19: Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Post date: Aug 7, 2013 2:49:20 PM

Essential Questions:

1) What has happened during the past 13.7 billion years?

2) When does it make sense to make predictions about the future?

3) What happens to us next? in the end?

Today, we looked at the future. Please see this Big History project article about the fate of our universe, solar system, and Earth. As supplementary material, you can watch this video about the fate future of humans and our relationship with the biosphere. For information on the eventual fate of our universe, this Wikipedia article on that topic is entertaining to read, as is this one about the future of an expanding universe. Here is a TED Talk by the statistician Hans Rosling about the future of population growth on Earth. Here is a super cute video about two rocks witnessing the history of Earth.

And, just for fun, here is the last episode in the Claim Testers comic.

Your projects and presentations are due in class on Monday, August 12, 2013. We will be presenting on Monday and Tuesday of that week to end our course.

For HW, please prep the following questions for seminar:

1. In what ways and with what results did increased globalization in the last 300 years impact Earth and the human species?
2. Using the 20th century as your lens, to what extent is collective learning beneficial?
3. What are the three most critical issues we will face on Earth in the next 100 years? What is the evidence for these predictions? (Put your claim-testers (especially logic and intuition) to good use!)
4. If these issues go unresolved, what are the next three Big History thresholds? What solutions exist for these issues? If implemented, how do our future Thresholds change?

Some of this is speculative, but use these texts:

1. Stokes Brown, Big History, Chapter 12:Industrialization, pages 210-229
2. Christian, Maps of Time, Chapter 13: Birthof the Modern World, pages 406-439
3. R&A Christian, Maps of Time, Chapter 14: TheGreat Acceleration of the 20th Century, pages 440-464
4. R&A Stokes Brown, Big History, Chapter 13: What Now? What Next?, pages 230-248

Lastly, here are Little Big History documents:

• The assignment document, detailing steps and due dates
• The initial topic graphic organizer
• The narrowing topic graphic organizer
• Little Big History Thresholds Graphic Organizer
• Here is an anchor for the annotated bibliography.
• Here is the graphic organizer for the annotated bibliography (due Wed, July 31)
• This is a guide to different kinds of sources and how to cite them for your bibliography.
• Here is a guide to footnotes (what they are and how to use them)
• A guide to JSTOR and how to log in and search for articles
• An initial list of possible text sources you can use for the project if you're feeling stuck
• A graphic organizer to help you write your conclusion to the LBH project.
• Here is the Little Big History rubric for 2013, off of which you will be assessed.