Thursday, October 21, 2010

global brain

Chris gave us a charming and original story (of his own composition) in FoL yesterday, about an emergent, distributed, conscious entity calling itself "Singy". I talked about it in one of my Intro classes today, in the context of a suggestion that maybe the web represents our next best hope for a new Renaissance. Intriguing.
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. FutureBlogger
I think Jaron Lanier will have something to say about this, and about how we ought to be less eager to turn ourselves into neuron-gadgets. We'll see. Meanwhile, if we all get an unsolicited email of unknown provenance... we'll have to see about that too. Is the singularity near?

1 comment:

Chris said...

The thing i am most looking forward to is to see if Moore's law really does predict that in 2015 computational power will hit the physical wall and what will we do to overcome that boundary.

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