I'm skeptical of this claim. It seems that the body of evidence now suggests that this universe is not going to undergo a Big Crunch, which means that if there had been previous cycles, this is the last one. This seems very unlikely. I'd put very little credence therefore in this sort of claim until we see how it fits with other data and models.
Moreover, this shouldn't make transhumanists that happy. Even if this has occurred in the past, there's likely a limit to how much information must have been transferable into useful forms given that we don't see evidence of any entities from the last cycle.
(Disclaimer: very poor knowledge of physics here, just interpreting the article)
http://www.physorg.com/print209708826.html
- looks like there are many of them, as non-creationists would expect
The really good news is
> In the past, Penrose has investigated cyclic cosmology models because he has noticed another shortcoming of the much more widely accepted inflationary theory: it cannot explain why there was such low entropy at the beginning of the universe. The low entropy state (or high degree of order) was essential for making complex matter possible.
Which I interpret to mean information passes through the Big Crunch/Big Bang cycle. No heat death, information passes through - good news for transhumanists?