Global Brain

The Principia Cybernetica Web discusses this subject on http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAIN-L.html -- FridemarPache

The web site above contains a large list of references on the GlobalBrain, including authors who thought about similar ideas but never used that term - partly because they predated it. Conspicuous by his absence is OlafStapledon. While most of his words on the GlobalBrain were fiction, his ideas were not really more speculative than those of some others on the list, and he looms too large in the field to make it easy to imagine he was accidentally omitted. This decision says something about the site, and I'm not sure if it's good or bad. I can sympathize with the desire to make sure nobody dismisses the whole idea as science fiction by including such a far out author, but he's actually thought more about what a GlobalBrain would do after coming into being than most of those other authors, and since the concept of the GlobalBrain still is in the formative stage I think trying to get people to take it more seriously by excluding fiction authors from the dialog could back fire. -- DavidWeisman

from the website ...

Cybernetic immortality can take the place of metaphysical immortality to provide the ultimate goals and values for the emerging global civilization.

Why not: Cybernetic immortality refines the now somewhat deprecated "metaphysical" immortality ...

The GlobalBrain is usually considered a CollectiveIntelligence, although it more likely will evolve (in my opinion) into a demagogic HiveMind. The WikiMind is generally considered a smaller version of the GlobalBrain.

Or at least it's generally considered that by people who do nothing here but navel gaze. The net is no more a brain than an ecosystem is an organism. It's a place where minds interact, not some larger mind.

That sounds like saying: "The brain is no more than an ecosystem of interacting cells." -- fp

Yes, thanks for saying this. As a place where minds interact, Wiki has been absolutely brilliant. Stating the false and fantastic teleology of emerging GlobalBrain suggests that Wiki being a place where human minds can interact so effectively is small beer. Well, I think otherwise. In its unpretentious simplicity Wiki is magnificent. This mind needs a lot of help but can interact here with many others much greater ... and is very grateful.

There is a [GermanLanguage] saying: "Manchmal sieht man den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht." Please help me to translate it to the EnglishLanguage equivalent. First draft: "Sometimes you can't see the forest, because you only see the trees".

GlobalBrain = the forest
trees = the interacting minds
WikiMind = a tree school ("Baumschule", there must be a better translation) [a copse is a small group of trees - is this what you mean? Hmm, that sounds like grove.] ["nursery" might be right.. a place where gardeners grow small trees, later to be planted elsewhere -- ChristophLuehr?]

-- FridemarPache

"You can't see the forest for the trees" is the usual English rendering. The converse is "Don't make a mountain out of a molehill". Then again, Wiki is more significant than a molehill. But if Quixote sees a giant, that doesn't mean the windmill isn't still a wonderful invention.

More on the GlobalBrain, with annotations and background music: http://crit.org/http://predicasts.net/brain.html

"References to historical GlobalBrain Thinkers: a collection of basic references, grouped by author, that explore the idea of the emerging planetary organism and its global brain, in the chronological order of first publication"

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAINREF.html

HerbertGeorgeWells anticipated the WorldMind? and the need for world wide collaboration: http://sherlock.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html

[1] http://predicasts.net/brain.html

There's also a new book out titled Global Brain, written by Howard Bloom: http://www.howardbloom.net/

Also see Peter Russell's Global Brain Awakens: http://www.peterussell.com/GB/globalbrain.html

An excerpt:

: So now, as the wisdom begins to spread out across the planet, there is instead a positive feedback - the wisdom reinforces itself . . . rather than dissolving the wisdom builds upon itself . . .
: This inner awakening could be the crucial ingredient in the linking of humanity into an integrated society , , a society in which we are linked spiritually through an awareness of our inner unity . . an awareness that we are all part of something greater . . and at the same time gaining a greater awareness of our individual potentials and uniqueness. . . a synthesis of greater individuality along with greater community.
: Such an inner development, if widespread, could be very valuable in helping humanity deal with the problems now facing it. We are clearly in a time of crisis. Most of us think of crises as bad; but maybe we have something to learn from the Chinese on this. Their word for crisis, Wei Chi, means two things. The first symbol means danger, beware. But the other two symbols mean opportunity - an opportunity for something new to emerge . . . If we only see crisis as danger, as a threat to our accustomed ways, then we may spend all our energy resisting it. We need also to look at the opportunities inherent in the crises.
: From an evolutionary perspective crises are a sign that something has gone wrong . . the patterns of the past are no longer working . . . Crises are thus a challenge. The challenge to adapt. They are the challenge to let go of the old ways of thinking and move on to a new way of seeing. . .
: Humanity's current crisis may not, at its root, be an economic crisis or an environmental crisis - it may well be a crisis of consciousness, a crisis in how see ourselves, and the world around. Many of us have probably experienced at one time or another those moments when we feel at one with the world; a sense of inner peace, with no need to prove who we are. The question is, can we allow these precious moments to happen more often in our lives - and in the lives of other people. In short, can we choose to explore and develop our greatest resource of all - our own minds, our inner selves.

Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now' is a compelling book about how those 'moments' referred to above, can go from moments to larger portions of our life and even the mainstay of it, once the frivolousness of conceptual thought is superseded. The techniques of achieving this are extremely simple, and exercise of them awakens the recognition of what people previously probably considered their 'souls', which in the current world dominated by word and conceptual thought, has been drowned out of existence and no longer a common part of personal awareness. What this other consciousness does is perform a synthesizing function, and through fractal extrapolation, the renewal of large scale human consciousness can happen through the increase in the number of small scale (personal) transformations.

See www.eckhartolle.com by Victor P. Riess

Does this mean Wiki is Buddha? No

You can say Yes too, because each phenomenon has BuddhaNature?. :-) So the answer is Mu. Are there dedicated Wikis for expanding the ideas here?

List: ...

BiLinks to some inspiring videos and invitation to a conversation to the TwinPage on the "Sister Site" : http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?GlobalBrain

CategoryKnowledge