The Global Brain

• Peter Russell's book The Global Brain introduced this term.  In the original edition, He summarized trends in the world, without much emphasis on computer technology.
• part of a long historical trend, including steps such as the invention of language, writing, printing telecommunications and now computers and the internet
• argues that we are developing into a global community, with information as the key resource - a point that many have made
• saw this as threatening because the lowest common denominators - greed and destructiveness- tend to predominate - this was a negative view of the future, a dystopia
• the reading From Two Small Nodes, a Mighty Web Has Grown gives an overview
• today, there is an opposite, utopian vision, e.g., Gore's "Digital Earth"
• "Already the Internet has proved capable of evolving into a much more complex and diverse structure than that contemplated by its original creators, and, since nobody can turn it off, it will continue to evolve. New technologies, new communication protocols, new software and other developments will make the net of ten years time as hard to imagine today as laptop computers talking to each other across the globe were twenty years ago."
• the development of the societal nervous system is analogous to the development of the human nervous system - increasing number of connections between cells resulting in a "brain"
• Cyborg technology may be the vanguard of this revolution

• many of the trends observed by Russell were also noted by systems analysts such as J.R. Licklider, who did not put them into such a dystopian framework.
• In the 1960s, Licklider wrote about "Man-Computer Symbiosis" and "The Computer as a Communication Device" in ways which anticipated many of the trends we are observing today.  (Page 32 of The Computer as Communication Device has diagrams which are very similar to Webmind.)
• The goals of man-computer symbiosis are: 1) to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems, and 2) to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs.
• Man-computer symbiosis is an intermediate step between “Mechanically Extended Man” and “Artificial

Intelligence” - it means working interactively with computers as you think, i.e., by using them to plot graphs as you work.  This kind of interaction is commonplace today, but was impossible with the computers of the 1960s
• today many of the things he anticipated have come to pass, such as interactive communities, online book sales, large capacity memory storage, etc.  See pages 32-33 of his paper on The Computer as a Communication Device.
• This is highly positive vision, a utopia.  Licklider predicted that:  In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. He experimented with meetings at which everyone sat at a computer and could show the others his or her files or exhibits.  Today, this kind of communication is the latest thing in  Internet Chat:  Voice with text and pictures.  Does this lead to better communication than writing letters?  Or sending written email?  Do we all want to be on instant messenger?  Certainly, we need to learn to use these tools better.  This is what your assignment for next week is about.

• relationship to Science Fiction visions - mostly frightening -
• is a "global brain" a good thing?  is it inevitable?
• will this technology advance or retard human freedom?
• how would it be different in a communist or fascist society?
• neither utopia nor dystopia, but an unstoppable evolutionary trend
• advantages of an Internet based, open architecture system
• a brain not rooted in biology will be different for technical reasons;  it will not reproduce sexually, it can be more readily rewired, etc.

• For next week, you should prepare an outline similar in form to this one, but with ten links
• Write this as if you were writing a speech.  Go to The Workbook for instruction on how to prepare a speech.
• selecting a topic:  it must have something to do with computers, the internet and society.  It needs to be focused, not just random observations.
• The Workbook says "If you can't state your specific purpose in one sentence, then you need to go back and reconsider your topic."  This is the residual message you want your listener to come away with.
• You need to have Main Points and sub-points.  Three to five main points, with perhaps three to five subpoints each.  Use the outlining feature of Communicator to distinguish the main points from the sub points
• This should be posted on your WEB page and handed in on paper to Andrew