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Interesting article: 'Evidence of a Global SuperOrganism'
from kk.org
"I am not the first, nor the only one, to believe a superorganism is emerging from the cloak of wires, radio waves, and electronic nodes wrapping the surface of our planet. No one can dispute the scale or reality of this vast connectivity. What’s uncertain is, what is it? Is this global web of computers, servers and trunk lines a mere mechanical circuit, a very large tool, or does it reach a threshold where something, well, different happens?
So far the proposition that a global superorganism is forming along the internet power lines has been treated as a lyrical metaphor at best, and as a mystical illusion at worst. I’ve decided to treat the idea of a global superorganism seriously, and to see if I could muster a falsifiable claim and evidence for its emergence.
My hypothesis is this: The rapidly increasing sum of all computational devices in the world connected online, including wirelessly, forms a superorganism of computation with its own emergent behaviors. " more
"I am not the first, nor the only one, to believe a superorganism is emerging from the cloak of wires, radio waves, and electronic nodes wrapping the surface of our planet. No one can dispute the scale or reality of this vast connectivity. What’s uncertain is, what is it? Is this global web of computers, servers and trunk lines a mere mechanical circuit, a very large tool, or does it reach a threshold where something, well, different happens?
So far the proposition that a global superorganism is forming along the internet power lines has been treated as a lyrical metaphor at best, and as a mystical illusion at worst. I’ve decided to treat the idea of a global superorganism seriously, and to see if I could muster a falsifiable claim and evidence for its emergence.
My hypothesis is this: The rapidly increasing sum of all computational devices in the world connected online, including wirelessly, forms a superorganism of computation with its own emergent behaviors. " more
Comment
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Comment by Duncan Edwards on May 26, 2009 at 11:50pm -
In a superficial sense, that seems to be the case. But I believe a true "organism" is more than a collection of basic units interacting with each other, regardless of the strength of their interactions (their "connected-ness").
If you consider a formless mush of cells to be an organism, then the sum of all technologically linked individuals and devices around the planet could be considered a super-organism. But calling the mush of cells an organism is not really meaningful or useful. It will exhibit emergent behaviour like any complex system, but not directed behaviour.
However, when it develops a brain (and muscles and eyes), it becomes a lot more important to think about it as a higher-level entity. The internet's doesn't fulfill these criteria yet, and it will take more than added mush for it to transcend.
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