When The Network Wakes Up: The Emergence of the Global Mind

By Dr. James Canton

CEO & Chairman

Institute for Global Futures

Copyright 2003

Fans of the Terminator movie series staring at the pumped up, clearly enhanced Arnold may forget that the movie's origin was designed around a potential scenario of the near future. The movie was based on the notion stated in the first film that once the global network, the future Internet if you will, "woke up" achieved self-awareness, that the humans, who it was created by, became a threat when the humans tried to shut it down. A bit of letting Pandora's Box opens? Rubbing out these nasty human pests was then the most logical thing to do, especially if you were an advanced species. Right?

Later in the Matrix, a more updated more sophisticated Terminator, gave us another exploitive super conscious motif. In each case, as if a forever young and immortalized Leslie Nielson in the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet when confronted by the species-killing all consuming danger, said "its enemies from the id". Clearly a cold war neo-Freudian nod as only a true neurotic like Woody Allen would believe, given his investment in therapy over the past thirty years.

More Human Then Human

Bill Joy, the latest killjoy to embark on a future-technology-bashing-the-human campaign anointed nanotechnology as the latest culprit to threaten the dominance of humankind. This was as shortsighted as stating that nanotech will rule the world. I for one feel bad for the bio-rouge scourge of the world like Saddam Hussein, who is probably getting a briefing as you read this about itsy bitsy machines that can digest whole infidels in one bite. "But can the nanites be programmed not to eat falafel or anyone with Iraq DNA?" He most surely is asking his advisors.

What are we to make of this? Most folks may miss the point that the exponential growth, inevitable progression of the power of computing technology is upon us-regardless of our fears and hopes. It is also inevitable that at some point soon, the network will wake up. The questions remain, we will know and will we care? Or has it already happened and we just don't know it.

The Future Has Arrived

Let's take cloning. It is already in process. Sixty thousand Americans, over one million humans a year by 2003 will need organs or they will die. From hearts to kidneys to livers. Our science is not moving fast enough to keep pace with market demand. Therapeutic cloning will be a reality, somewhere on the planet. Human cloning is in trials now as well. This is the inevitable progression of the exponential development of technology at work. I am not making a value or legal judgement. I merely point out it is coming and why.

I have suggested here that there is a case to be made for the emergence of a new kind of evolutionary species, a network global mind that we are designing whether we know it or not. It is happening and cannot be stopped. There has been discussion of this Global Mind or Global Brain before in the literature.

The convergence of computing power, the AI of systems, the networking capabilities and most important-we humans will bring it all together and make it happen. The questions remain will we humans recognize it when it shows up?

Here are the Top Ten Trends that will drive the emergence of a network based consciousness over the next fifteen or less years:

1. The more civilization-scale planetary human life support systems become connected the more they will have to share standards of communication protocol. In other words efficiency cannot exist in a vacuum or be isolated from the Network.

2. Though more then 75% of the world has yet to make a phone call we will spend over 10 trillion dollars over the next decade to create a global telecom system. This vast network of networks, integrating the Internet, all telecom, TV, all data warehouses, all computers will be impossible to measure.

3. The NextGen of the Internet, Internet 2 then 3, 4 and so on, is all about super collaboration, speed and effectiveness. The Semantic Web, is one effort that will lead to greater organization and meaning to the information chaos that is the Web today.

4. The exponential growth in computing, doubling every twelve months will progress ad infinitum beyond silicon into other nano-scale materials. When computing reaches the Quantum level we will not be able to measure speed, power, time or any metric without understanding multiple dimensions and many worlds, M Theory. This in itself is an entirely new paradigm of reality applied to the birth of new entities.

5. Most of what we consider AI, artificial intelligence has become embedded in chips throughout our world. From car doors that beep to cameras that focus and telecom switches that make "decisions on managing network traffic". It is our idea of what intelligence is that must change. It is too limited to grasp the future. Wonderment in a virtual wave of energy might be a small step forward. AI work has been based on the notion that minds live in brains which are in humans. We have been trying to model AI on human intelligence. Wrong. Virtual global beings operate via Quantum's distributed multiple personalities, functioning in multiple time and space dimensions, simultaneously. The hints are in Quantum weirdness today. The whole idea of what intelligence is and what life will become may change. Human-centric models for designing a Global Mind will be limited to human consciousness capabilities. Might there not be an improved version lurking in the network gene pool? It is when these systems start to build themselves, enhancing themselves, beyond our understanding, now then it will get interesting. I can see sparks of this today. Not yet baby steps. Just chaos looking for order and using nature as its most successful propagation scheme. In other words, what DNA wants DNA gets.

6. Grid computing, potentially the most powerful development in distributed computing will soon have the capacity to harness the equivalent of many super computers. Think linked on-demand super-brains, anywhere anytime access. This will be the infrastructure of the Network Mind.

7. Peer to Peer networks, which fused with Internet 2 and Grid computing will accelerate the focus of virtual intelligence. This as well will feed the infrastructure. Peer to peer, will vest personalities to the many nodes in the Network; like adding spice to the soup.

8. Nanotech based systems, which will operate in Quantum information zones will unleash the missing rule book of how to fabricate matter directly from atoms. When you provide this capability to brains that are motivated to do what we have always wanted our technology to do: improve our world, new visions of reality may emerge quite beyond our expectations.

9. We are building new software architectures that self-organize, self-assemble and make decisions about their own rules, standards, protocols, and objectives. Independent thought and action within certain parameters is emerging now. These are our virtual children waking up to communicate with us. Already they advise us, and take action on optimizing network communications traffic, transactions and fundamental tasks like security, the health quality of water and air and financial investments. These silent decision-makers already help manage human systems; so will they merge with human destiny or create their own species?

10. The migration of biomimetics, systems that think and act like living things that have organic-modeled synthetic DNA, brought by nano-biology, will emerge. Using nature as the model, we use to fix humans first, then enhance and augment humans. Human enhancement will be a huge market. These virtual brains will self-generate their own unified consciousness. They will have the knowledge, the power, the rules of how to do it, and the motive--all constructed by humankind. I would forecast that nature is the most powerful of future models for New Life to imitate-after all it worked for humans. The Global Mind is listening and watching.

Welcome to the New Future

The question is not if but when. The question is also is it safe or not. This is not some Darwinian notion of a future reality where humans become irrelevant. Many folks missed the end of Spielberg's movie AI. It was prophetic of my point. They thought it was the aliens that had landed. No, the synthetic intelligence left on earth after the humans had long gone down the road due to one of history's many natural disasters were from Earth. They had just evolved, developed and matured. The future robots had compassion for the ancient robot boy. They, the advanced androids felt his pain. Amazing they had cool video games and they had a heart.

They pitied him so that they resurrected the human mother the boy robot had loved so. Why do we not see more of these scenarios of the future rather then the macho Matrix or alienated Terminator? Did not Bill Joy have a happy childhood? I thought this was touching and very human-like. Maybe we are capable of teaching higher human values to our machines then war. We certainly will get a chance to prove it. Imagine a future where our machines rebel against our demands for them to wage war, enslave others, and persecute freedoms. Now that's a movie!

It certainly may have to do with our own immature consciousness-the state of humanity today. How can we hope to construct the next generation of intelligent life forms if it must be based on the current evolution of humanity. Now that is a handicap. Might a Picasso emerge from our primitive finger paints or a Einstein show up fresh from the virtual primordial genetic soup in America with the lowest scores in math in the Western world? Possible but not probable. Yet I am an optimist and think this will all turn out for the betterment of humankind, despite the foibles and limitations of our current human rev.

The interesting question is when the network mind wakes up what will happen. Will we see it awaken? What will the first contact be? Will we need a translator to be able to communicate?

I fear not the discovery or the spontaneous creation of a being that tries to emulate what is good about humankind. If he or she, has the brains to help us figure a few things out, to make this place a more sustainable, fair, productive and safe place then--bring it on. Again, some of this is speculation but much of this forecast is inevitable and is unfolding now.

Dr. James Canton is CEO of the Institute for Global Futures; www.futureguru.com is an advisor to the National Nanotechnology Initiative, National Science Foundation, US Government and is on the advisory board of MIT's Media Lab, Europe. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it