T HE F UTURE H ISTORY OF THE N ET
T HE F UTURE H ISTORY OF THE N ET
Over the next decade, I believe, we will see the evolution of the Net into a full- fl edged, largely autonomous, globally distributed intelligent system. As this occurs, we will see this Internet artifi cial intelligence (AI) network wend itself further and further into human affairs, yielding a synergetic, symbiotic global intelligent system, incorporating machine and human intelligence into a single continuum of thought,
a human–digital global brain. This vision of a global Web mind is related to several other visions of the digital future. For instance, many futurists have envisioned a future Net populated by artifi cially intelligent entities, interacting in virtual worlds. This vision was portrayed most memorably by William Gibson in his entertaining and infl uen- tial novel Neuromancer (1994). While this is a reasonable idea, and it does not contradict my own thinking in any way, it is different from what I am projecting here, which is that the Net itself will become a global intelligent system—a World Wide Brain.
On the other hand, a number of others thinkers—most famously, roboticist Hans Moravec (1990)—have envisioned that humans will eventually “download” themselves into computers, and will lead bodiless digital lives. This is also related to, but different from, the idea of a global Web mind; the two ideas synergize in a fascinating way.
Initially, the global Web mind will exist as an entity physically separate from human beings: We will interact with it via our computer terminals, and perhaps more creative interface devices such as virtual reality (VR) headsets. This fi rst phase is in store maybe 5 to 20 years down the line, and it is the main focus of my think- ing at present. The increasing integration of human activity with World Wide Brain operations may ultimately occur via body-modifying or body-obsolescing tech- nologies a la Moravec, or it may occur without them, through the advent of more sophisticated noninvasive interfaces. One way or another, though, I conjecture, it will fuse the global Web.
12 World Wide Brain 311
The change that is about to come as a consequence of the emergence of the global Web mind will be a very large one—comparable in scope, I believe, to the emergence of tools, or language, or civilization. What will distinguish this change from these past ones, however, is its speed. In this sense, those who are alive and young today are very fortunate. They will be the fi rst human generation ever to witness a major change in collective humanity with a time span of only a single human lifetime, instead of the dozens or hundreds it has taken before.
This chapter treats these developments on several different levels, First,
I discuss the nature of mind and intelligence in the context of complex systems science—a newly emerging interdisciplinary body of knowledge that provides a framework capable of comparing intelligence across different physical substrates (e.g., brains and computers). Then, to make the idea of Internet intelligence more concrete, I briefl y discuss the Webmind Internet AI (artifi cial intelligence) software that I helped developing at IntelliGenesis Corporation in the late 1990s, which was aimed at creating “Intranet brains” or “Webmind units” serving as knowledge management systems for businesses and other enterprises, and linking these intranet brains together into a “society of mind” or proto-World Wide Brain (see Goertzel, 2001, for a more extensive discussion of Webmind). I also discuss my current, related work with the Novamente AI system (Looks et al., 2004). Finally, with these impor- tant, relatively mundane details under our belts, I turn to the more philosophical and transpersonal side of things, exploring the general human implications of the emergent Internet intelligence that this sort of AI software and other software will make possible.