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By way of comparison, it is interesting to ask the “for good or for ill” ques- tion of the computer itself. The answer, in this case as in the case of the global Web brain, is not 100% clear.

What, one might ask, has the computer contributed to economic productivity? It is generally assumed that computers have improved our effi ciency, but there are no good fi gures in existence to prove this. In fact, the most literal read- ing of the economic fi gures tells you that computers have had a bad infl uence on productivity. True, economic measures are always suspect, and it is particularly diffi cult to measure productivity in the service sector, which is where computers have had the greatest impact. But is seems quite plausible to me that the economists are right, and that computers, rather than increasing the productivity of most busi- nesses, have largely had the effect of replacing one kind of work with another, one kind of employee with another.

And then one might ask, what has been the computer’s total contribution to culture and the quality of life? Most of us who use computers regularly will probably answer “Huge! Computers have improved our lives tremendously!” After all, how dull life would be without e-mail; how tedious writing was before word processors; how nice my son fi nds World of Warcraft on a rainy (or sunny) day; how useful is Excel for the small businessperson, Mathematica for the scientist, etc. And there is no denying these positives, but even so, there are other ways in which the cultural infl uence of computers has been terribly negative. Computers are, in one view, the ultimate conclusion of a century-long trend toward the impersonal- ization of business transactions.

How many times have you heard someone remark that in the old days, there was a personal relationship between the businessperson and the customer. There

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was an element of caring there, and not merely “caring” in the economic sense of caring about retaining someone’s business. Business transactions were human interactions. This is a cliché, but like many clichés, it is deeply true. Anthropologist Marvin Harris (1987), in his book Why Nothing Works, coined the word “dis-service” to refer to the manifold inconveniences caused to modern Americans by computerized inventorying and billing systems, and other technological and orga- nizational developments that divorce business transactions from genuine human interactions. He points out the tremendous number of hours wasted, and the huge amount of stress caused in trying to rectify the misunderstandings caused by the dehumanization of business.

Computers have given us e-mail, word processing, and lots of cool games and useful tool for working. They have given us ATM machines, safer airplane fi ghts, and cars with superior performance (though not necessarily lower repair bills, as anyone who has ever had to replace their car’s “main computer” can attest). But, by contributing to the cultural trend toward depersonalization, they have also taken from us; they have taken a million little opportunities for genuine, rich, physical/ mental human interaction. As with any other “advance,” there has been a tradeoff.

Computers are a good example because of their obvious relatedness to the global Web mind, but, in fact, the same issues arise with any technological innovation, even civilization itself. Are we, one may ask, better off than our Stone Age predecessors? Some say yes, some say no. Some say that our ancestors worked only 2 hours a day, hunting and gathering, and spent the rest of the time enjoy- ing each other and the world around them. No routine stress, no neurosis. There was genuine pain and suffering in times of cold or hunger or illness, true, but we civilized folk have not exactly eliminated these problems; and we have evolved our own specialized physical diffi culties: AIDS, herpes, lung cancer. In fact, modern diseases did not spread signifi cantly until sedentarism replaced nomadism as

a standard style of life. The interesting thing about the ambiguous value of technological innova- tions, however, is how little it seems to matter, in practical terms. Progress, it seems, can never be resisted, and once it has been made, it can never be permanently retracted. These are heuristic laws of cultural development, to which we have seen no major exceptions in human history so far. There is an ebb and fl ow to human affairs, but there is also, in the long term, a powerful overall movement toward greater social complexity and greater technological and intellectual sophistication.

No one, today, is going to go back to using a typewriter to write. In the United States today, only a few old or poor people use typewriters. Few middle- class parents are going to let their children grow up without computers; and in another decade, nearly every household will have some sort of networked computer in it, just as nearly every household today has a television. Most probably, the computer and the television will become a single appliance. And no one, today, is

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going to go back to living in the Stone Age manner. Modern technology is too seductive. It makes me sad to witness the collapse of the few remaining Stone Age cultures, in such places as central Africa, the Amazon jungle, Papua, New Guinea, and outback Australia. But one cannot, in good faith, tell the citifi ed Aboriginals of Western Australia: “No! Go back to the desert! Hunt and gather!” Because one knows that one would do the same exact thing in their shoes. And why not?

The truth is that new technologies appeal to human nature. We like to have more, to see more, to do more. We like to extend our capabilities. Once we see the possibility of climbing up a little higher, we want to go there. We like to be more effi cient and “cooler.” And furthermore, as biologist Gregory Stock (1993) (a member of the Global Brain Study Group) has argued in MetaMan, this kind of attitude is not a quirk of our particular neurochemistry, it is a natural consequence of our intelligence. An intelligent organism is, by its very nature, constantly seeking more, constantly striving to exceed itself. It is possible for intelligent organisms to get locked into relatively stable, steady-state systems, such as aboriginal culture, which remained basically the same for around 50,000 years. Such a steady-state system channels the need for growth and expansion in specifi c directions, while restricting it from other directions. But even so, the intelligent mind is always striving in all possible directions, and as soon as a new direction becomes apparent—be it computers, civilization, or the global brain—the intelligent mind will seek it out.

Valentin Turchin (1997), like many other systems theorists, speaks of an inev- itable rise toward more and more complex forms of life. He applies this principle to the emergence of life from inorganic matter, to the emergence of human intelligence from basic life forms, and to the emergence of the global superorganism from humanity. What this philosophy is doing is merely positing the universe itself as an intelligent system. Turchin is saying that the universe, like the human mind, cannot resist a new innovation, a better, more effi cient way of doing things. It may glide along for a while in a steady state, but eventually the new idea will occur, and then it will be irresistible. The universe, like the mind, has an eye for intricate new patterns.

And so, one sees that the global Web brain will be good in some regards, and bad in some regards, but the one thing I believe most strongly is that it will be irresistible. It will have its good and bad points, and it will also help to get rid of some of the bad points of the technologies that support it. For instance, the depersonalization of business interaction, brought on by the computer, will disappear in the wake of new kinds of computer-mediated human-to-human interaction. In the long run, the voices calling to kill the global brain will be no more dominant than the voices calling, right now, to kill civilization and return to the jungle. The heuristic law of progress, the uniters’ tendency to build up hierarchies of emergent patterns, is stronger than the human race itself.

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