Over the next several hundred years, as humanity grows in numbers, progresses in technology, and generally, learns how to control its environment with more accuracy and efficiency, the structure of society is likely to change in some very significant ways. Because, of its already noticeable impact on the every day lives of many people, the Internet has attracted attention as something which may well bring about significant changes. The tendency of the Internet to promote connected-nesss between individuals and its ability to disseminate large and diverse quantities of information has led many theorists to espouse the concepts of the superorganism and global brain as descriptions of future human society.

Ideas of the human superorganism and global brain first appeared in modern form in Herbert Spencer's The Principles of Sociology (1876-96)¹. The superorganism idea gained scientific support from the work of the notable Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky. He performed groundbreaking studies of the large scale biochemical processes of the earth, and was the first to think of the Earth and all living things as a single biosphere². While the biosphere concept deals with the Earth as a whole, Vernadsky also coined the term, noosphere, which more specifically denotes "the network of thoughts, information and communication that englobes the planet."¹ This network could only be a phenomenon attributed to humans, and in 1955, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin published his work, The Phenomenon of Man, in which he popularized the term, noosphere¹, and the concept of the human superorganism and the global brain. Since then, a wide range of thinkers has taken up these concepts and developed them using today's knowledge of the world and humanity.

The most straightforward way of approaching the concept of the human superorganism is through trend. By examining a significant trend throughout the development of living creatures and humanity, in particular, it is possible to extrapolate the development of the human superorganism. This trend has been for systems of single entities acting separately to combine into systems of many entities acting in cooperation. The many-entity system can then be viewed as a single, larger entity, often with significant qualities which cannot be attributed to the individual entities making up the system.

The most basic example of this is the organic cell. Within a cell are approximately 10¹⁰ molecules all cooperating to perform the functions of the cell³. Any cell is considered to be alive. However, one would never attribute this quality to the individual molecules. As such, it is apparent that a new and significant quality has arisen from the combination of the molecules.

The creation of this new quality of life by the combination of molecules can be further examined. Because no molecule alone is alive, no one could ever predict the phenomenon of life by considering only one molecule. However, if the interactions between molecules are also considered, it is possible that systems complex enough to exhibit the characteristics of life could be predicted. This emphasizes the idea that the interactions between the single entities in a complex system are integral to the formation of the new quality. The new quality does not simply arise from having many single entities all together. Indeed, a random collection of 10¹⁰ molecules is very unlikely to result in a lifeform.

This tendency of individual entities to combine to form larger, more complex entities manifests itself further in the structure of multicelled organisms. The single cell organisms, which existed before the development of multicelled organisms, realized a distinct survival advantage by cooperating with other single cell organisms to satisfy their basic needs. The level of cooperation between single celled organisms evolved until the cooperative units could be viewed as single entities or multicell organisms.

Just as before with the molecules and cells, the multicell organisms, or animals, have characteristics which cannot be attributed to the individual cells. The most striking example of this is sentience in humans. Individual cells cannot be thought of as sentient, but the collection of them in the human brain has this quality. And as before, the new quality of sentience arises from the interactions of the individual brain cells.

Speculating about the future development of humanity, proponents of the superorganism concept notice this same trend in human societies with modern free market economies. In these societies, individuals acting for their own benefit often find that cooperation with another individual serves to further the individual interests of both parties. Indeed, this concept has been developing for millennia and has reached the point where people spend the majority of their lives specializing in one area of expertise. People provide work in narrow areas that somehow benefit others and contract with others to provide for their needs in all other areas.

As science advances and society develops, this trend of specialization intensifies. That this has been occurring becomes apparent by examining the development of civilization over the past several hundred years. Society was relatively simple in the 1400's, with the majority of people specializing in agriculture and working mainly to support themselves, their families, and their feudal lord. As the world was explored and scientific discoveries slowly made, occupations became more diversified. Advances in engineering such as the printing press and long distance, ocean-going ships caused a need for people to pursue careers other than farming. More people took up trading, and the cities became more highly populated until they gained enough power to supplant the obsolete feudal powers.

The incredible rate at which scientific discoveries and technology advances are made today ensures that the need to specialize will only increase. As humans become even more specialized in narrow fields of expertise, the need for cooperation becomes even greater. In general, the more a person has specialized in one field, the less they know about other fields, and the more they must rely on others to provide knowledge or services in other fields. In this manner, the complexity of societal interactions and cooperation is constantly increasing with developments in science and technology.

Thus, we are reminded of the single cell organisms whose level of cooperation increased to the point where all cooperating cells could be seen as a single, more complex multicell organism. In the same way, if one assumes that the progress of humanity will continue in the manner we have seen throughout history, we can extrapolate the development of a human superorganism. Such a superorganism would result from the highly complex interactions and cooperation of the human individuals as they each act naturally in their own best interests.

The guiding intellect of this human superorganism can be defined as the global brain. Following the trend we have been discussing, this global brain would likely have qualities which cannot be attributed to individual humans. Just as a cell cannot comprehend the concept of a human or of sentience, we may not be able to fully understand the nature of the superorganism and the global brain. However, one can hope that our sentience and investigative nature might give us more success than the cell.

To understand the influence of the Internet of the global brain it is necessary to discuss the current state of the global brain. As testified to by all the present strife in the world, it is evident that the global brain, if at all existent, is still in a very primitive form. While there is a reasonable level of cooperation among members of some countries, cooperation among member of different societies is still quite limited by language and cultural differences. Also, at least half of the people in the world are not in political or economic situations in which they can participate in a superorganism and global brain. Clearly, humanity has far to progress and many obstacles to overcome before the global brain can emerge as a coherent entity.

The advent of the Internet in the past decade has caused quite a stir among thinkers sympathetic to the global brain concept. It is thought that the Internet might be the ingredient needed to bring about the emergence of the global brain as a coherent entity. The reason the Internet inspires such optimism is due to its likeness to human brains and to its global-ness. Firstly, the organization of information on the world wide web in hypertext format closely resembles the associative connections formed by neurons in the brain. Secondly, the Internet network encompasses the entire globe, holding the possibility for linking all humans with a means of virtually instant interaction. Thirdly, it could conceivably store all human knowledge and provide instant access to that knowledge to its users.

Besides simply noticing the trend of today's civilization toward developing a global brain, some thinkers have suggested specific ways in which this might come about through development of the Internet. It should be noted that the mechanisms discussed below all have the development of the global brain as a secondary motivation. The primary motivation is increased efficiency of information gathering, which is desirable for individuals acting for their own benefit. This is important for the healthy development of the global brain. The global brain must develop as a natural process that benefits individuals and never as an end in itself. This helps to guarantee that human individuals will not find themselves being oppressed for the "good" of the global brain.

Francis Heylighen and Johan Bollen present what they term associative memory in their 1996 work The World-Wide Web as a Super-Brain: from metaphor to model.⁴ Associative memory denotes the process by which hypertext links on WWW sites remember how many times they get used and where they lie on sequences of links that people choose. Then based on this information sites would reorganize their links to minimize the lengths of paths that get chosen the most. For instance, if a certain path from site A to site B to site C to site D gets used often, site A would simply create a link directly to site D. Thus, the WWW would actively maintain its own high level of associative efficiency much like the human brain does.

Another more immediate development is the Webmind software being developed by IntelliGenesis Corp.⁵ This software implements a revolutionary method of storing information. Given a database of information (e.g. scientific data or Internet pages), Webmind separates each piece of information into a data entity. This data entity is given the ability to compare itself to all the other data entities. As such, each data entity continually interacts with the others and establishes associative links based on relationships between the data entities. These relationships can be specified by the users to meet their specific needs.

Currently, Webmind only functions with databases of digital numbers on individual computers or intranets. However, IntelliGenesis Corp. is very optimistic about developing it further to eventually handle information such as web pages. If this happens, each web page will be given the ability to interact with every other web page. Each page will tirelessly seek out other pages on the WWW, and through artificial intelligence techniques it will judge the relevance of content in other pages to its own subject matter. The page will then create and organize links to other pages based on its relation to them.

In this way, the WWW will actively organize information to increase the efficiency of information gathering. If a person was able to find even one page on the topic of concern, he would have links to all other sites related to that topic. The Webmind concept coupled with the associative memory idea would be a powerful tool for maintaining the efficiency of information gathering in the vast sea of randomly posted web sites that we have now.

Another further development in information gathering, which could be implemented in the next decade or so, is the use of Knowbots, proposed by Dr. Ben Goertzel at IntelliGenesis Corp.⁵ Knowbots are artificially intelligent agents, which work to gather information for their users. A Knowbot would be informed of the needs of the user and perhaps provided with some search criteria. Then it would actively search out web pages containing the information needed by the user. Aided by the relational links created using the Webmind and associative memory concept, it would be able to perform, in a reasonably short time, a comprehensive survey of human knowledge on the topic of concern. It would then collect the gathered information and organize it for presentation to the user. Thus, a person would simply need to specify a wish for certain information, and if that information is known to humanity, he will receive it in short order through the work of the Knowbot.

All of these information gathering mechanisms can be viewed as ways of improving the efficiency of interaction between people who are cooperating to perform various actions. The knowledge provided by a person with a certain specialty is more readily available for use by others who might need it. As such, the Internet, by dramatically increasing the level of cooperation between individuals, could possibly lead to a solidification of the global brain as a coherent entity.

References

1. Basic References on the Global Brain / Superorganism

http://www.aoe.vt.edu/~cwenger/cascade.html

2. "Vernadsky, Vladimir Ivanovich" Britannica Online.

http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/621/13.html

3. Russell, Peter. The Global Brain. J.P. Tarcher, Inc. Los Angeles, 1983.