SYMBIOTIC INTERNET INTELLIGENCE IN PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

SYMBIOTIC INTERNET INTELLIGENCE IN PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Let us now shift gears from the immediate and commercial to the prospec- tive and philosophical. Imagine the Internet, a few years from now, the home of an advanced, self-organizing AI system, spanning tens of thousands of intranets world- wide. Such a system would be an independent, intelligent entity on its own, inter- acting with humans and incorporating human workfl ow and question asking and answering behavior into its own intelligent dynamics. It would weave the process of

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collective social inquiry and individual human mental inquiry into a digital fabric of a texture guided by its own processes of intelligent self-organization.

This view of the future of the Net is reminiscent of the archetypal idea of the “global brain,” which fi rst started appearing in the 1970s. In Russell’s (1995) book on the Global Brain, for example, computer and communications technology are assigned only a minor role, and it is argued that human society is reaching a criti- cal threshold of size and complexity beyond which it will enter the realm of true intelligence, and human consciousness will give rise to a higher level of collective consciousness. Russell’s hypothesized suprahuman intelligence might be called a “global societal mind,” as distinct from the global Web mind that is my central topic of interest here. Both the global societal mind and the global Web mind, however, are specifi c manifestations of the general concept of a “global brain”—an emergent, distributed worldwide intelligence.

Russell ties the global brain in with new-age, consciousness-raising practices. By meditating and otherwise increasing our level of individual consciousness, he suggests, we bring the awakening of the global brain closer and closer. When there is enough total awareness in the overall system of humanity, humanity itself will lock into a new system of organization, and will become an autonomous, self-steering, brainlike system.

Speaking generally, one can envision the global Web mind as leading to a global societal mind a la Russell in two different ways. First, we might actually become part of the Web in a physical sense. This could be accomplished either by downloading ourselves into computers, by the fabled “cranial jack,” or by some kind of true VR interface. Or it could be done by incorporating our existing bodies into the Web via newfangled sensory and motor devices. Imagine brains as websites, and modem/cell phones inserted directly into the sensory cortex! Or, second, we might become part of the Web via our actions, without any extra physical connections. This is already happening, at least among certain sectors of the population. As more and more of our leisure and work activities are carried out via the Internet, more and more of our patterns of behavior become part of the potential memory of the global Web mind. Webmind or Novamente or similar software, implemented widely and used intensively across intranets, could lead to this effect quite easily.

The global Web mind and the global societal mind, then, are not really such different things at all. If a global Web mind comes about, it will clearly link humans together in a new way, leading to some kind of different and more intelligently structured social order. This is one fl avor of global brain. On the other hand, if a global societal mind comes about, communications technology such as the Internet will doubtless play a huge role in its formation. This is another fl avor of global brain. The question is, will there be an intelligent Web interacting with humans in a subtle way, or will there be an intelligent societal system incorporating the Web, human beings, and all their interactions. What kind of global brain will we actually see?

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In fact, Russell’s (1995) book is only the best known of a host of independent discoveries of the concept of a global superorganism over the past few decades. Joel

de Rosnay, for one, has published several books in French on the notion of a “cybi- onte,” or cybernetic superorganism. His earliest, Le Macroscope, was published in 1975; L’Homme Symbionte (de Rosnay, 1996) updates the concept with discussions of chaos theory, multimedia technology, and other new developments. Valentin Turchin (1997) laid out in The Phenomenon of Science an abstract, cybernetic theory of evolution, and used it to discuss the concept of an emerging, metahuman “superbeing.” His crucial concept is the “metasystem transition,” a term for the process of a phenomenon that previously was a whole suddenly becoming a part. For example, the cell, which has its own systemic unity, its own wholeness, becomes a part when it becomes part of the human organism. There is a metasystem transition between cells and organisms. There is also a metasystem transition between computers and networks; one’s PC at home is a natural whole, but the networked PC of the year 2010 will be something quite different, in that most of its software will require interaction with outside computers, and most of its behaviors will be incomprehensible without taking into account the network outside it. And with services like Google Desktop and the advent of online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, it is clear that we are already partway there.

Currently, humans are whole systems, with their own autonomy and intel- ligence, and human societies display a far lesser degree of organization and self-steer- ing behavior. But, according to Turchin, a transition is coming, and in the future there will be more and more intelligent memory, perception, and action taking place on the level of society as a whole. Turchin’s vision is one of progressive evolution; as time goes on, one metasystem transition after another occurs, passing control on to higher and higher levels. One of Turchin’s most active contemporary followers is Francis Heylighen, of the Free University of Brussels. Heylighen believes that the Web will be the instrument that brings about the metasystem transition, leading from humanity to the metahuman superorganism. The PrincipiaCybernetica web- site, which he administers, contains an extensive network of pages devoted to super- organisms, metasystem transitions, global brains, and related ideas. Together with his colleague John Bollen, he has also experimented with ways of making the Web more intelligent, by making its link structure adaptive, in the manner of a neural network.