Terence McKenna and his idea of extropy is explained through thewindow of opportunity we can call novelty. One of Terence McKenna’smost widely promulgated ideas is known as Novelty theory. It predictsthe ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality oftime. McKenna developed the theory in the mid 1970s after hisexperiences in the Amazon at La Chorrera led him to closely study theKing Wen sequence of the I-Ching. Novelty theory involves ontology,extropy, and eschatology. The theory proposes that the universe is anengine designed for the production and conservation of novelty. Novelty, in this context, can be thought of as newness, or extropy (aterm coined by Max More meaning the opposite of entropy). According toMcKenna, when novelty is graphed over time, a fractal waveform knownas “timewave zero” or simply the “timewave” results. The graphshows at what time periods, but never at what locations, noveltyincreases or decreases. Considered by some to represent a model ofhistory’s most important events, the universal algorithm has alsobeen extrapolated to be a model for future events. McKenna admitted tothe expectation of a “singularity of novelty”, and that he and hiscolleagues projected many hundreds of years into the future to findwhen this singularity (runaway “newness” or extropy) could occur. The graph of extropy had many enormous fluctuations over the last25000 years, but amazingly, it hit an asymptote at exactly December22, 2012.
