The global brain – a brief glimpse at our Internet future

By Dick Pelletier

     The World Wide Web is a network of inter-connectivity that goes everywhere and follows its own intelligence. The advent of this newly emerging communication field around our planet has enabled citizens from all lifestyles to communicate globally via words, sounds and pictures – inexpensively, person-to-person; and from the safety of their own homes and offices – for the first time ever.

     The Internet represents a major step in our evolution, and is a forerunner of things to come. Artificial intelligence researcher Francis Heylighen sees huge growth as this new world-wide communication system continues to gain power from billions of humans adding to its intelligence every day. “It will get smarter,” Heylighen says, “as it morphs into a global super-organism that could one day provide solutions to most of humanity’s problems.”

     Experts compare the Internet to a planet growing a global brain. As users, we represent the neurons. Texting, emails, and IM act as nerve endings, and electromagnetic waves through the sky become neural pathways. Like germinating seeds, this global brain continues to evolve and as some forward-thinkers believe, will not stop until it develops feelings and achieves consciousness.

     Feelings represent a lower level of awareness of what goes on in a system’s environment. In that sense, the global brain will be conscious of important events affecting its goals. A higher level of consciousness – self-awareness – would require that the global brain could reflect on its own functioning. The Internet, in the wider sense of the world community is slowly becoming aware of itself. Although today’s algorithms make the web more intelligent, it cannot monitor itself. However, in principle, there are no obstacles towards implementing such a capacity in the future.

     Search engines can adapt web pages to user needs. These hyperlinks bear a remarkable resemblance to the human brain. Synapses that connect neurons become stronger with repeated use, and disappear when usage declines. Similarly, global brain’s algorithms will reinforce popular links, while rarely used links will diminish and die.

     Could tomorrow’s global brain allow uploading the human mind? At present, information exchanged between humans and computers only occur with mouse, keyboard or voice. However, many futurists believe that one day technology will enable us to separate our minds from the physical brain and store its information in a computer.

     This is not as crazy as one might think. IBM hopes to reverse engineer the human brain by 2030, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute is rounding up 300 of the world’s top neuroscientists to capture human thought at moment of creation, which conceivably could enable thoughts, memories, and feelings to be transferred into a machine.

     In the future, many believe we will treat the human mind like any other bit of information by copying and storing it in various media. Scientists are aware that our mind roams over trillions of neurons and today, we do not possess abilities to understand this incredibly complex system.

     But by mid-2030s, when artificial intelligence is expected to surpass human intelligence levels, and quantum computing systems become reality, positive futurists believe that our global brain will become fully conscious and self-aware as it helps humanity achieve what promises to become a “magical future.”

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.