Fire, Cells, and Circuits: A Story of The Human Experience

From the first flicker of fire to the rise of intelligent circuits, humanity’s story is written in energy, life, and pattern. We are creatures of cells that learned to harness flame, build machines, and eventually create systems that reflect our own intelligence.

In this event, we’ll explore how fire, cells, and circuits each mark a turning point in the evolution of agency — from the spontaneous organization of matter into life, to the human mastery of energy, to the emergence of artificial systems that may soon rival our own creativity. The event will feature a presentation followed by open discussion, offering space for reflection, questions, and new perspectives.

We’ll look at how these domains connect:

• How fire transformed survival into civilization
• How cells encode the self-organizing principles of life and learning
• How circuits allowed humanity to harness the power of electricity — and eventually the power of abstract logic itself
• And how synthetic biology may soon close the loop — circuits designing new cells

At its heart, this is a story about what it means to be human in an age where life, energy, and intelligence are merging again — and how understanding that story might help us navigate what comes next.