The exegesis of Philip K. Dick - hacking the hero's journey: Richard Doyle at TEDxLowerEastSide

If you've seen TEDGLOBAL speaker Jason Silva, Rich Doyle will blow you away. He's one of Jason's biggest inspirations, and this talk will take you out of your comfort zone and force you to THINK. Professor Doyle is the Liberal Arts Research Professor at Penn State University, where he taught since 1994. Since reading the work of futurist Alvin Toffler at age 12, Doyle has been on a scholarly and personal quest to understand the effects of information technologies on the evolution of human culture. After completing a PhD at UC Berkeley and a post doctoral fellowship at MIT, he has received grants from the National Science Foundation and written a trilogy of scholarly books on the effects of information technologies on human evolution and the effects of language on consciousness. His latest, Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants & The Evolution of the Noosphere, focuses on the co-evolution of humans with psychedelic plants such as psilocybin, cannabis, and ayahuasca as humans explored the space of all possible states of consciousness with the same fervor as they explored the external world. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)