Neurosphere: The Convergence of Evolution, Group Mind, and the Internet

For over a century, scientists and seers around the world have suspected that our species is approaching the cusp of another great change. This feeling has been growing and becoming more insistent, and seems to be quite different from the more familiar millennial myths or general despair about the state of the world. In India Sri Aurobindo wrote volumes about the future evolution of not just individuals, but humanity as a whole. Meanwhile in the West, the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin spoke about the "noosphere" - a sphere of human thought - and his vision of humanity evolving toward the Omega Point. De Chardin envisioned a "single thinking envelop" surrounding the earth. He saw it as a kind of living intelligence comprised of the minds of all sentient beings. The author of this book, Donald Dulchinos, has spent the last fifteen years or so working in various aspects of cable television. He was also one of the early and long-time participants in the Well, one of the first virtual online communities. In this fascinating book he says that he firmly believes that the Internet is fostering a global consciousness in humanity, akin to a spiritual awakening. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Marshall McLuhan began to use the term the "global village," by which he meant the psychological and social consequences of technologies, and most particularly radio and television. By the early 1980s a number of people began to speculate that communication technologies might provide the catalysts for the emergence of some kind of "group consciousness," which would turn us gradually from egocentric to geo-centric thinking. Over the years, as the technology and our interconnectedness has leapt forward, many have continued to express this view, but few as comprehensively or eloquently as Donald Dulchinos in this book. By a strange "coincidence" he and I were writing about the same thing at the same time. And I am sure that we were not the only ones: that really suggests that there is here an important truth that many of us have been picking up on. This book continues the discussion, supplying a range of examples from the digital revolution to buttress his central idea that the Internet is "rapidly becoming the central nervous system of a collective intelligence, a global brain, a giant leap forward in evolution." The book covers a lot, from the author's own experiences of deeply meaningful interactions with others in online discussion groups, to the much less mundane topics such as mystical experiences, parapsychology and the perennial favorite of science fiction writers: the possibility of uploading consciousness into a computer. I liked the book, although I am not sure that I can agree with his rather reductionist view of human beings: I am sure that we are more than just electrons whizzing around. And if the thesis is correct, and the Internet is providing the infrastructure for a leap forward in consciousness, then would we not expect it

This is book for anyone interested in Big Questions. What is the difference between brain and mind? What is the connection betwixt thought and neuro-electric activity? If we descend from spirit into matter, what coalesces from the immaterial into the physical? Or, if consciousness is the product of some evolutionary trajectory, what structures hold evanescent experience in the body? What is the ultimate ground of our being, and are we approaching interconnectivity in it through computer groupmind? Using Teilhard de Chardin's concepts of spiritual evolution as a springboard, Mr. Dulchinos dives into the marginally-charted waters of the interface of mind and computer, and our increasingly shared experience of the internet. He lucidly explores both anomaly and trend, edgy science and history of how we got here. Clearly Mr. Dulchinos is a thinker, and we need more of his kind of projection to counter the prevailing corporate myopia. Read this book and think for yourself.