this is going to get a little philosophical, but the word civilization opened that door.
I'm going to try to combine sociology, biology and chemistry with this explanation.
Is the entropy of Human Civilization increasing?
I'll define entropy as disorder. In chemistry terms I would describe disorder as more particles or a higher state of disorder like a gas. I KNOW THIS ISN'T A COMPLETE DEFINITION, but go with it to follow my flow of thought. In biology, disorder could be related to biodiversity. Biodiversity has many definitions, but I go with a diversifying gene pool. Increase the genotypes, and one increases the amount of disorder. In sociology, I would look at disorder as being an increase in cultures or institutions.
Therefore, with these definitions in place, I would state that human civilization is decreasing entropy. I don't mean that the universe is, I mean only "human civilization."
Here's why: I would say that the world is becoming monoculturalistic. Face it, the Western civilizations are greatly influencing the cultures of the world. Money is king. If you want to obtain money, you have to sell a product that western civilization will buy. I can see this at the local and at the international level. At the local levels, I see Mom & Pop places being replaced by corporate america. As I travel across the US, every city, looks like every city. How many of you have eaten at: McDonalds, Olive Garden? Drank a Pepsi or Coke? Gone to Starbucks? Shopped at Best Buy or Walmart? Own a Dell, Gateway or HP? Do I need to continue? Internationally, I see the same corporations. McDonald's is everywhere (Fast Food Nation) for example. If one wants a 1st world nation to buy your product or produce, you have to provide what they want? This affects the local cultures and the biodiversity of the biosphere?
How's the biosphere affected? In biology, natural selection doesn't exist as it use to be. Now, it's more like economic selection. If it doesn't hurt the economy or if it is highly marketable, that life (organism) exists. We see forests being destroyed, for farm land. We see fauna being destroyed for large scale production of a couple species (like cows, pigs and chickens). This reduces the diversity on the gene pool.
Chemically, the gene pool relates to DNA - & since DNA is a molecule - less entropy, more complexity.
Some say entropy has to increase (just one of many theories), so unless humans keep adding energy to the system, I predict it will have to diversify or break apart. Are fossil fuels what we add to the system to maintain this level of entropy? If they become scarce what will happen? Is this what happened to the Roman Empire (on the science side - I mean I could read "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" to get all the details)?
I'm not trying to get deep here. It's just a thought. Maybe someone could offer their views. It might help me clarify my thoughts.
PS - Just thinking of this - biodiversity is increasing in a few groups of organisms - prokaryotes - disease resistent bacteria. Even in other biological entities like viruses like HIV - with the mutation rate of it's reverse transcriptase.
savoy out