Global Brain , livre ebook

This lusty tome generated by Bloom s voracious reading habit and extraordinary talent for explanation proclaims that groups of individuals-from people to vervet monkeys to bacteria-organize themselves, create novelty, alter their surroundings, and triumph to leave more offspring than loner individuals. A stunning commitment to scientific evidence, this sequel to The Lucifer Principle ought to purge the academic world of selfish genes and the neo-darwinist dogma of individual selection.
-Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and recipient of a 1999 National Medal of Science
The Thales of the Internet, H. Bloom thinks what he wants, writes what he thinks, and performs his synthesis with a good heart, uncompromising truth, creative brain, and mountains of evidence. From the bacterial web of Eshel Ben-Jacob to the scientific sidelining of Professor Ling, we see the daunting power of groups that interact and sacrifice their members in order to thrive and evolve.
- Dorion Sagan, author of Biospheres and coauthor of Into the Cool: The New Thermodynamics of Life
Howard Bloom s Global Brain is filled with scientific firsts. It is the first book to make a strong, solidly backed, and theoretically original case that we do not live the lonely lives of selfish beings driven by selfish genes, but are parts of a larger whole. It is the first to take this idea out of the realm of mysticism and into the sphere of hard-nosed, data-derived reality. And it is one of the few books which carry off such grand visions with energy, excitement, and keen insight.
-Elizabeth Loftus, former President, American Psychological Society, and author of Witness for the Defense and The Myth of Repressed Memory
In a superbly written and totally original argument, Howard Bloom continues his one-man tradition of tackling the taboo subjects. With a marvelously erudite survey of life and society from bacteria to the Internet, he demonstrates that group selection is for real and the group mind was there from the start. What we are entering now is but the latest phase in the evolution of the global brain. This is a must read for professionals and laymen alike.
-Robin Fox, University Professor of Social Theory, Rutgers University, and coauthor of The Imperial Animal
A modern-day prophet, Bloom compels us to admit that evolution is a team sport. This is a picture of the universe in which human emotions find their basis in the survival of matter, and the atoms themselves are held together with love. I am awestruck.
- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Media Virus, Coercion, and Ecstasy Club
God, this is great stuff!
-Richard Brodie, author of Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme and original author/programmer of Microsoft Word
Stunning! Howard Bloom has done it again. He is certainly on to something.
-Peter Corning, Director, Institute for the Study of Complex Systems; President, International Society for the Systems Sciences; and author of The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive Evolution
Howard Bloom s work is simply brilliant and there is nothing else like it anywhere-we ve looked, as have our colleagues. Global Brain is powerful, provocative, and mind-blowing.
-Don Edward Beck, Ph.D., author of Spiral Dynamics and Codirector, National Values Center
Howard Bloom has a fascinating vision of the interplay of life and a compelling style which I found captivating.
-Nils Daulaire, President and CEO, Global Health Council
My head is still spinning from so much eloquence and content.
-Valerius Geist, President, Wildlife Heritage and author of Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design and Toward a Biological Theory of Health
Bloom paints a spirited and wide-ranging picture of the importance of information-sharing and other forms of cooperation in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. Arguments on group versus individual selection are normally conducted in dense prose, but Bloom s overview is high, swift, and enjoyable.
-Peter J. Richer son, coauthor (with Robert Boyd) of Principles of Human Ecology and The Pleistocene and the Origins of Human Culture: Built for Speed
GLOBAL BRAIN
GLOBAL BRAIN
The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

HOWARD BLOOM

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
NEW YORK CHICHESTER WEINHEIM BRISBANE SINGAPORE TORONTO
Copyright 2000 by Howard Bloom. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212) 850-6011, fax (212) 850-6008, e-mail: PERMREQ@WILEY.COM.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Bloom, Howard K.
The global brain : the evolution of mass mind from the big bang to the 21 st century/Howard Bloom.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-471-29584-1 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN 0-471-41919-2 (paper)
1. Brain-Evolution. 2. Human evolution. I. Title.
QP376.B627 2000
576.8-dc21
99-085976
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6
To
Richard Metzger
Florian Roetzer
Bradley Fisk
and
E. Barton Chapin, Jr.
There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the bland and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals.
Edward Gibbon

DON JUAN [out of all patience]. By Heaven, this is worse than your cant about love and beauty . Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the device of the clockmaker s pendulum, and uses the earth for its bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up a ball, and that our age-long epochs are but the moments between the toss and the catch, I, my friend am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me. If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the mandoline, my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to understand itself .
THE DEVIL. What is the use of knowing?
DON JUAN. Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? The philosopher is Nature s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
George Bernard Shaw
CONTENTS
Prologue: Biology, Evolution, and the Global Brain
1. Creative Nets in the Precambrian Era
2. Networking in Paleontology s Dark Ages
3. The Embryonic Meme
4. From Social Synapses to Social Ganglions: Complex Adaptive Systems in Jurassic Days
5. Mammals and the Further Rise of Mind
6. Threading a New Tapestry
7. A Trip through the Perception Factory
8. Reality Is a Shared Hallucination
9. The Conformity Police
10. Diversity Generators: The Huddle and the Squabble-Group Fission
11. The End of the Ice Age and the Rise of Urban Fire
12. The Weave of Conquest and the Genes of Trade
13. Greece, Miletus, and Thales: The Birth of the Boundary Breakers
14. Sparta and Baboonery: The Guesswork of Collective Mind
15. The Pluralism Hypothesis: Athens Underside
16. Pythagoras, Subcultures, and Psycho-Bio-Circuitry
17. Swiveling Eyes and Pivoting Minds: The Pull of Influence Attractors
18. Outstretch, Upgrade, and Irrationality: Science and the Warps of Mass Psychology
19. The Kidnap of Mass Mind: Fundamentalism, Spartanism, and the Games Subcultures Play
20. Interspecies Global Mind
21. Conclusion: The Reality of the Mass Mind s Dreams: Terraforming the Cosmos
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
PROLOGUE:
Biology, Evolution, and the Global Brain

Since the infancy of the personal computer in 1983, authors and scientists have been churning out works on the subject of a coming global brain strung together by computer networking. Today the Internet, the World Wide Web, and its successors allow a neuroscientist in Strasbourg to swap ideas instantly with a philosopher of history in Siberia and an algorithm juggler in Silicon Valley. But according to the visionaries who predict a world-spanning intelligence, this is just the beginning. They tell us that a radical human transformation has begun, 1 one that will hook the billions of minds of humanity together into a single system [like] Gaia growing herself a nervous system. 2 We will soon come together, predict the techno-prophets, on a post-World Wide Web computer net that will learn our ways of thought and fetch us the knowledge we need before we know we want it, a web that will turn the human race into a single spiritual super-being, a massive collective conscious that will even incorporate the brains of computer-equipped whales in dis