Global brain

The Global Brain is a metaphor for the intelligent network formed by humans together with the knowledge and communication technologies that connect them.

The term was first coined in 1982 by Peter Russell in his book "The Global Brain". The first peer-reviewed article on the subject was written by Mayer-Kress and Barczys in 1995.

Francis Heylighen, who contributed much to the development of the concept, distinguished in ((Heylighen 2005)) three main aspects of the global brain metaphor. These are the "organicism", "encyclopedism" and "emergentism" aspects.

Organicism aspect

This approach sees our planet or our society as a living system. This view can be dated back to 1159 with John of Salisbury. In his treatise of political science the "Policraticus" he compares society to a creature. Each social class plays a role attributed by God: the king is the head, the Church is the soul, the judges and governors are the eyes and the ears, soldiers the hands and farmers the feet. Thomas Hobbes also compared society to the marine monster, the Leviathan in his famous piece of work bearing the same name. However, it is Herbert Spencer who studied in most details this analogy in his monumental Principles of Sociology.
Gregory Stock proposed in 1993 a modern vision of superorganism formed by humans and machines, which he calls "Metaman". In this organic metaphor, the analogue of the nervous system is thus the global brain. The exchanges of information on Earth are processing at a high rate and speed, similarly as the functioning of a nervous system.

Encyclopedism aspect

In the encylopedism aspect, the emphasis is in developing a network of universal knowledge. The first encyclopedic endeavour was attempted by the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert. However, at the end of the 19th century, the amount of knowledge was too important to be published in one single synthetic piece of work. To tackle this problem, Paul Otlet founded the documentation science, now called information science. H. G. Wells also proposed the idea of a world encyclopedia, or World Brain. Nowadays this dream of a universal encyclopedia seems to become a reality with Wikipedia.It is also noteworthy that Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, was inspired by the free associative possibilities of the brain for his invention. The brain can link different kinds of information without any apparent link otherwise; Lee thought that computers could become much more powerful if they could imitate this functioning, i.e. make links between any arbitrary piece of information. (Berners-Lee 1999, p4 and p41).

Emergentism aspect

This approach focuses on more spiritual and speculative aspects of the global brain. The global brain is here seen as a higher level of evolution. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his The Phenomenon of Man made a remarkable synthesis of science and religion and had a vision of evolution towards more complexity and consciousness. He anticipated a new level of consciousness, a network of thoughts which he called the "noosphere". This can be interpreted as an early anticipation of internet and the web. Peter Russell also emphasised the spiritual dimension that everyone should strive for, in order to achieve a greater synergy in the superorganism.

The emergence of a higher order system in evolution may be called a "metasystem transition" (a concept introduced by Valentin Turchin) or a "major evolutionary transition" (see Szathmary and John Maynard Smith, Nature, 16 March 1995) .

See also

*Gaia hypothesis
*Metaman (Gregory Stock)
*Noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin)
*Social organism
*Superorganism
*World Brain (H. G. Wells)
*Management cybernetics
*Collective intelligence
*Conscious-Technology

External links

* The Global Brain FAQ. [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAIFAQ.html]
* Peter Russell's [http://www.peterussell.com/index2.html website]
* Global Brain mailing list (subscription moderated). [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAISUB.html]
* [http://www.worldservice.org/issues/febmar97/worldlawnow.html The World Syntegrity Project]

Bibliography

Wide audience

*P. Russell 1982': "The Global Brain Awakens" (emphasis on philosophy and consciousness)
*G. Stock: "Metaman" (social and economic evolution)
*J. de Rosnay: "The Symbiotic Man" (new sciences and technologies).
*S. Nambisan & M. Sawhney (2007): "The Global Brain" (emphasis on global innovation management)

Advanced literature
* See references about the Global Brain [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAINREF.html]

* Berners-Lee, Tim (1999) – Weaving the Web. Texere, London.
* Bloom, Howard (2000) Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century.
* Goertzel, B. (2001) - Creating Internet Intelligence: Wild Computing, Distributed Digital Consciousness, and the Emerging Global Brain. Ed. Plenum.
* Heylighen F. (2007): Accelerating Socio-Technological Evolution: from ephemeralization and stigmergy to the global brain, in: "Globalization as an Evolutionary Process: Modeling Global Change", edited by George Modelski, Tessaleno Devezas, and William Thompson, London: Routledge (ISBN 9780415773614), p.286-335. [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/AcceleratingEvolution.pdf]
* Heylighen F. (2007): "The Global Superorganism: an evolutionary-cybernetic model of the emerging network society", Social Evolution & History. 6 No. 1,p. 58-119--a detailed exposition of the superorganism/global brain view of society, and an examination of the underlying evolutionary mechanisms, with applications to the on-going and future developments in a globalizing world [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Superorganism.pdf]
* Heylighen F. (2005): "Conceptions of a Global Brain: an historical review", , Technological Forecasting and Social Change [in press] [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/GBconceptions.pdf]
* Heylighen F. (2004): "Das Globale Gehirn als neue Utopia" (The Global Brain as a new Utopia), in: R. Maresch & F. Rötzer (eds.) Renaissance der Utopie (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt) [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/GB-Utopia.pdf]
* Mayer-Kress, G. and Barczys, C. 1995 - The global brain as an emergent structure from the worldwide computing network. The information society 11(1): 1-28. [http://www.santafe.edu/~gmk/Pubs/InfoSoc/]