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OUR QUEST FOR ENLIGHTENED REALIZATION
Introduction
Firstly, thank you for your interest and I hope readers will contribute their own considered analysis and gut intuitions here intelligently, regardless of whether or not they agree with these postulations and the presentation of them. Secondly, I’m looking forward to our interactions and building upon this model together. Thirdly, I have the flu whilst I write this so my own brain may not be optimally functioning!
Nevertheless, I promised a knowledge share and here it is.
This post is an initiating conversation in a continuum of “negotiations of intellect” (discourse) I’m engaging in with others interested in the subject matter, as well as within myself. It’s a work-in-progress that will evolve with every substantive external influence, perceptual intake and distilled wisdom from the diverse contributors on KNOL and from across the Web who sanity-checks, dimensionalizes and synergizes the model, over our lifetimes.
It is not intended to be the definitive, static or absolute end-game version, nor indeed the academic / geek version. It is the organic version of a young woman who appreciates the thinking of seasoned, male visions and technical accounts of what the Global Brain is and, yet, questions some of their central tenets and wonders whether other factors have either been overlooked or not even considered yet that would make the concept more democratic, holistic, pragmatic and realistically achievable.
More than anything, its aim is to increase awareness of developments related to the Global Brain beyond its tech sector and academic niche to as wide an audience as possible, in order to stimulate conversations and conducive collective actions.
I decided to start this posting today, 26 November 2008, on the day my father would have turned 65 (legal retirement age). Unfortunately, he passed away in March 2007 whilst in a coma. Throughout his life he was a seeker of knowledge — as evidenced by his extensive book collection — and his coma once again brought to the fore for me the mystery of consciousness and whether intelligence resides exclusively as a control function of the brain or whether it permeates the whole body: intelligence as embodiment within every cell. I take faith from knowing with confidence my father was consciously aware of our presence and appreciated it, despite what the neurosurgeons’ professional opinions were. I collected mobile video evidence that proved wrong their medical position he was “completely unresponsive and unaware,” which subsequently resulted in an apology from the lead neurosurgeon in a coroner’s court, on record.
In addition to the direct experience of my father’s situation which made me re-evaluate what I know and is known about the brain, I’ve also had an interest in intelligence since a young age; the adults said I was a “bright child, very conscious of what’s happening around her”. Being somewhat mischievous I wondered if this meant I was fluorescent and whether brightness excused me from having to eat an apple a day or to do my homework.
Contributing to this quest for pieces in the puzzle, at management school and throughout working life I’ve been exposed to most models of collective intelligence harnessing or “the networked effect of talent,” encompassing the entire spectrum from command and control to near-complete meritocratic autonomy. All such models are an attempt to find competitive edge solutions as well as methodologies to catalyze innovation within (alas, often) bureaucratic confines, to increase collective productivity and reduce ignorance, malpractice and inefficiencies.
It’s for this myriad of interconnected reasons I’m interested in the Global Brain: personal, parental and professional.
The enlightened realization of it would be revolutionary for Mankind and has serious implications.
THE GLOBAL BRAIN
The Global Brain: a definition
There is no Oxford English dictionary definition for this conjunction of words yet. Within the microspheres of Silicon Valley and academia (notably neuroscience, experimental psychology and management sciences), it is generally accepted to be:
The “Global Brain” (GB) is a metaphor for this emerging, collectively intelligent network that is formed by the people of this planet together with the computers, knowledge bases, and communication links that connect them together. This network is an immensely complex, self-organizing system. It not only processes information, but increasingly can be seen to play the role of a brain: making decisions, solving problems, learning new connections, and discovering new ideas.
No individual, organization or computer is in control of this system: its knowledge and intelligence are distributed over all its components. They emerge from the collective interactions between all the human and machine subsystems. Such a system may be able to tackle current and emerging global problems that have eluded more traditional approaches.
Yet, at the same time it will create new technological and social challenges which are still difficult to imagine.
On the consumer marketing side, trendwatching.com in 2007 referred to it as:
All of the world’s intelligence and experience, fully networked, incorporating not only the usual suspects like gurus, professors and scientists, but the experiences and skills of hundreds of millions of smart consumers as well. With the ’shortage of talent’ that every brand on every continent seems to fear in 2007, tapping into THE GLOBAL BRAIN seems a, well, no-brainer. This year, expect many corporations, small and big, to aggressively court the 1% of most creative and experienced individuals roaming the globe.
Amongst the more intellectually oriented, different people have proposed a wealth of names for this concept of a cognitive system at the planetary level:
hive-mind — Lion Kimbro, Wikipedia editor
global mind — Howard Bloom
mass mind — Howard Bloom
noosphere — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
planetary brain — Joël de Rosnay
social brain
super-brain — Francis Heylighen
World Brain — H.G. Wells
It has also been increasingly associated with and proxied to a global superorganism; equivalent terms proposed in this categorization have included:
Cybion — Joël de Rosnay
Metaman — Gregory Stock
One Machine — Kevin Kelly
super-being — Valentin Turchin
social organism
The Global Brain: a contemporary context
Contingent upon whichever scientist or science fiction author has been read and is considered a personal guru / hero / role model, the contemporary concept of the Global Brain is attributable to either H.G. Wells in 1938 or to Peter Russell in 1983. Numerologists and code deciphers may notice how 38 and 83 are chiral (mirror) forms of each other. Other authors who will be highlighted in this section are Howard Bloom, Kevin Kelly and Mohanbir Sawhney whose professional origins and fields of expertise stem from the record industry, technology journalism and management sciences, respectively.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was a renowned English author, futurist, essayist, historian, socialist, and teacher who wrote The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). In 1938, at the age of 72, he published The World Brain in which he specifically proposed:
We could build a real ‘World Encyclopedia’ with a true ‘planetary memory for all mankind’…
...knitting all the intellectual workers of the world through a common interest.
The emergence of the World Wide Web, Wikipedia and Knol itself indicate that this weaving and wefting is happening in our lifetimes and we have the tools at our disposal to participate in its creation.
As an associated point, as early as 1902 Wells had the germinations for the Open Conspiracy in his writings and subsequently published the pamphlet in 1928. This Open Conspiracy would mobilize power and intelligence to create a new kind of social and political synthesis, a new world unity beyond the confines of the established political order, according to Wells.
His design for the Open Conspiracy was to create a new unity, a new organizational and social synthesis for the world; he regarded it as a necessity for “human society” to be rescued “from the net of tradition in which it is entangled and [reconstructed] upon planetary lines’ (Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (since 1866). New York: Macmillan, p. 549).
Interestingly, the Open Source movement has gathered pace over the last five years with the advent of the creation of the Linux operating system, P2P file-sharing technologies from the likes of Napster and Skype, Creative Commons licenses, Sourceforge for openly sharing code development, the work done by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation to secure Internet freedoms as well as the work undertaken on behalf of Net Neutrality , the availability of Miro as an open source Internet and TV player and now Google’s OpenSocial tools, along with the OpenID principles. This strand too seems to have been influenced by the Wellsian vision of an open ‘World Encyclopedia / Brain’ available beyond nation states and the control of any particular party. Essentially, a democratic mind portal where content is diverse, historical, real-time, dynamic, trackable, evolutionary, and individuals own and activate the control buttons at our own convenience.
Half a century on from Wells’ The World Brain, the GB concept gained media exposure again with Peter Russell (1946 —), a British author and producer of award-winning films on consciousness, spirituality and business coaching, who was born in the year that Wells passed away. Russell started undergraduate studies in mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University before switching to experimental psychology, subsequently studied for a Ph.D. in the psychophysiology of meditation at Bristol University, also gained a post-graduate degree in Computer Science and has worked with Tony Buzan to develop mind mapping tools. Buzan is the founder of the World Memory Championionships.
In his 1983 book, The Global Brain Awakens, Russell proposed a Global Brain that might emerge from a worldwide network of humans who were highly connected through communications. His arguments made the observation that throughout evolution qualitative transitions to a new level of organization have been observed to occur in several instances where a system attains approximately 10 billion (ten to the tenth power) units that are tightly but flexibly coupled. Examples include the number of atoms in a bio-molecule, the number of molecules in a cell, and the number of cells in the cortex of the human brain. Since the world population (1994: 5.7 billion projected at the time of Russell’s writing) was within an order of magnitude of ten to the tenth and growing, the threshold for a new level of organization, by his arguments, could be reached soon. Hence, Russell saw the network of interconnected humans forming a Global Brain.
Across the Atlantic, Howard Bloom the music industry veteran traces the origins of the Global Brain back to the formation of the world and bacterium in his seminal books, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang To the 21st Century, and The Lucifer Principle. In both books he explores the neo-Darwinism principle of self-interest versus group interests paradigms and proposes a potential bridge that may encourage the individual to contribute to the Global Brain on a team basis. He continues to share his thoughts on the “global data sharing among bacteria” --- as an example of how human organisms too can coalesce their efforts --- on his Scientific Blogging site:
In a lab dish, E. coli can do something neo-Darwinian theory says just cannot be. Neo-Darwinism is a late 20th century, mathematically buttressed evolutionary dogma that says all evolution comes from competition between individuals, and that cooperation is simply a byproduct of selfishness.
According to this view, all change in a genome-all change in a string of genes– is random. To survive, each genetic change has to give the selfish members of a species an edge. Yet when E. coli are given a food their metabolism can’t digest, salicin, they engineer their genome into a form that disables them. They take a big step backward. Why? So they can take their genome a step forward, re-jigger their metabolism, and turn the salicin from an obstacle in the path into a buffet.
According to neo-Darwinians, the giant step backward is impossible. How do E. coli pull it off? By using Group IQ.
A September 2008 interview with Bloom by Jon Udell, one of Microsoft’s product evangelists and a blogger, can be viewed here: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3836.html
Now, no discussion about the Global Brain would be complete without also citing the analysis and predictions of Kevin Kelly, the founding executive Editor of Wired magazine and a well-known blogger with his Technium series. Kelly’s argument centers on the One Machine concept (24 October 2008):
I define the One Machine as the emerging super organism of computers. It is a megasupercomputer composed of billions of sub computers. The sub computers can compute individually on their own, and from most perspectives these units are distinct complete pieces of gear. But there is an emerging smartness in their collective that is smarter than any individual computer. We could say learning (or smartness) occurs at the level of the superorganism…
This megasupercomputer is the Cloud of all clouds, the largest possible inclusion of communicating chips. It is a vast machine of extraordinary dimensions. It is comprised of quadrillion chips, and consumes 5% of the planet’s electricity. It is not owned by any one corporation or nation (yet), nor is it really governed by humans at all. Several corporations run the larger sub clouds, and one of them, Google, dominates the user interface to the One Machine at the moment…
With that perspective a useful way to tackle the question of whether a planetary superorganism is emerging is to offer a gradient of four assertions.
There exists on this planet:
- I A manufactured superorganism
- II An autonomous superorganism
- III An autonomous smart superorganism
- IV An autonomous conscious superorganism
From the corporate perspective, The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World, was published on 22 October 2007 (coincidentally my birthday). It is co-authored by Mohanbir Sawhney, who is the McCormick Tribune Professor of Technology, the Director of the Center for Research in Technology and Innovation and the Chairman of the Technology Industry Management Program at the Kellogg School of Management, with whom I've had email exchanges in the past about innovation structures. Within the management sciences context, the GB concept refers to:
…a global network of scientists, independent inventors, academic researchers, customers, suppliers, as well as different types of innovation intermediaries who facilitate the innovation process (for example, idea scouts, innovation capitalist, etc.)…
The lead co-author, Satish Nambisan, who is Associate Professor of Innovation Management and Technology Strategy at the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, commented in an interview with Ideas Connection:
While The Global Brain is primarily focused on the for-profit world, I have received a lot of inquiries from non-profit organizations. Now much of my research is focused on social innovation and especially on collaborative social innovation. I think the opportunities for network-centric innovation is of a magnitude of one hundred times greater in social innovation than in for-profit innovation. Issues related to healthcare, environment, and energy —
those are big issues which require cooperation among different sectors and different countries. Those are the places where we are going to see some radical network-centric innovation models emerging in the next decade or so.
As an adjunct it may also be informative to read Professor Eric von Hippel’s excellent and freely available book, Democratizing Innovation (Creative Commons license), which proposes a world in which each of our individual intelligence counts and can contribute to a more enlightened whole via active democratic participation. Professor von Hippel is Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
So why is the Global Brain concept seeming to gather impetus (or at least a renaissance) and interconnecting across different spheres from anthropology to corporate management to bleeding edge Silicon Valley?
The Global Brain: a social tech rationale
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, articulates the need for a Global Brain in the way he explains what, potentially, the Semantic Web can and should do:
Currently, the Internet is a stack of document pages linked via html tags and those links are surfaced (predominantly) with statistical algorithms rather than relational ones. Through the appropriate deployment of the Semantic Web stack and an emergent set of standards (RDF, FOAF, SPARQL, OWL and others), which are being continuously developed in conjunction with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), over time the data on these document pages will become independently linked to each other into a form of social graph and semantic sense — semantics is more accessibly known as "contextual" meaning. The aim is for the data to become "smart," readable by man and machine on a more equivalent basis and the algorithms to reflect more "natural intelligence." This evolution of the way information on the Web is classified, tagged and connected will build towards a state where every data item is like a node in the neural architecture of the Web (potentially nodes which can learn, adapt, attach, detach, replicate, recall and substitute themselves in a similar way to how neural DNA works).
The ultimate purpose for a Global Brain would be to surface, cross-pollinate and innovate ideas and frameworks which offer solutions to the world’s major issues such as:
- democratic societies
- economic stability and sustainability
- universal free education
- cures for diseases and illness
- green compliance
- holistic human existence in symbiosis with the planet
During a W3C talk given in London on 3rd December 1997, entitled Realising the Full Potential of the Web, Berners-Lee predicted:
The Web will have a profound effect on the markets and the cultures around the world: intelligent agents will either stabilize or destabilize markets; the demise of distance will either homogenize or polarize cultures; the ability to access the Web will be either a great divider or a great equalizer; the path will either lead to jealousy and hatred or peace and understanding.
The technology we are creating may influence some of these choices, but mostly it will leave them to us. It may expose the questions in a starker form than before and force us to state clearly where we stand.
We are forming cells within a global brain and we are excited that we might start to think collectively. What becomes of us still hangs crucially on how we think individually.
Each semantic techco in Silicon Valley and their global counterparts is interpreting the potential of building the GB and harnessing knowledge differently — everything from Freebase’s attempts to create a semantic Wikipedia to Plaxo's semantic social network to True Knowledge, evri and Powerset’s ambitions to deliver on semantic search engines that understand the context of queries rather than the keyword statistical methodology supposedly deployed by Google.
[Side note: More thorough and objective analysis actually points to Google deploying a matrix of sophisticated technologies to deliver its search capabilities beyond keywords alone, but that’s the subject for another dedicated Knol post.]
To date, none of the semantic technologies I’m aware of are working exclusively towards resolving the world’s major to-do's. This is interesting because it shows that silo self-interest (competitively commercial) rather than global altruism and holistic collective intelligence may already be at play in the GB.
The Global Brain: current limitations
Having road-tested a few knowledge sharing technologies (including some semantic ones), there are five key areas where improvements are necessary before the Global Brain can be achieved:
(1.) integrated tools and standards which enable sense making. The qualification, quantification and tracking of multi-variant intelligent positions over time; an algorithm's capabilities to memory recall and isolate specific events, visually model in 3D the DNA of decision-making and its series of interconnected parties; generate a matrix of decision options with weightings — and not simply taxonomies to correlate one keyword to another in a social semantic graph according to Bayesian distributions — are still to be developed and provided;
(2.) resolution between the neo-Darwinism “individual selection” and the “group selection” paradox. This is necessary to explain and justify why and how culturally diverse people with different value systems would be incentivized and proactively contribute to the Global Brain — either of their own free will, peer pressure, survival of brain trust teams, for monetary exchange or other trade-off, via altruism or some survivalism genus which mixes individual and group interest considerations.
(3.) Inclusion of and accounting for cultural contributions and differences. Gender, religion, age and other demographic criteria all affect our inherent being, how we think, navigate social situations and interact with others. If the Global Brain is being envisioned and built by a particular demographic (male, middle class, middle-aged, Caucasian, tech geek, monoglot, 1000 elite minds of 7 billion global population) then it is already pre-oriented and biased towards a non-global structure and has inadvertently codified exclusion in its model(s).
Essentially, in the emerging Global Brain important synaptic connectors are being atrophied and neurons rendered inactive and inert by this exclusion.
(4.) Perceptual and humor frameworks. These affect interpretations of meaning, intent and context. I’ve blogged about this previously in a light-hearted way and am currently developing a Media Perception Matrix, crossing a key chemistry tool with some semantics, that may provide further insights and granularity on perception.
Broadly speaking, GB technologists are focusing on the issue of the spirituality and conscious self-awareness of the AI and neural networks underpinning some of their attempts to build their version of a global encyclopedia of connected people and content. They're missing other key human elements. A simple search on Google with the terms “global brain humor” hardly elicits any entries. Following is a rare link which does include some glimpses as well as an informative angle on David Bohm’s theories of quantum mechanics --- which is often referred to as akin to the GB leap towards the Singularity.
* The Global Brain: Quantum Mechanics, Humor and Common Sense
The article reminds us:
“You have many special mental faculties: humor, spirituality, eroticism, music, mathematics, aesthetics, nurturing, gossip and narration.”
To date, the Global Brain participants concentrate on adopting and refining the mathematical approach to social graphs (semantic and otherwise) rather than considering and incorporating the humor, nurturing or narration aspects too. In contextualizing and in sense making, these factors are as valuable constituents as the mathematical and computer code ones.
Humans do calculate the risks and probabilities involved when we make decisions but invariably if the narration, the nurturing (or positioning) and the humor is good this can over-ride whatever approximation mathematics we generate in our minds because we then synergize our decisions with feelings as, “Who knows? So the likelihood of failure is 60%. So I’m paying a premium of 10% over cost. So I can’t really afford it……..but I’m going to enjoy and have fun with it while it lasts!”
Rigorous mathematical elements are essential for the formation of the Global Brain. Nevertheless, so are the biochemical mechanisms of memes and the cultural demographic contributions. The challenge is how can they be converted into machine-readable language for interpretive processing?
At the moment, thinking about and development of the Global Brain is oriented along somewhat linear, niche and uni-dimensional lines and disconnected from the way our brains naturally think. There is the AI and neural nets branch of mathematics to proxy the binomials of option selections, decision making and consciousness; taxonomies to reflect scientific classification; and emergent semantics from linguistics to contextualize, but no smart wit nor synergies of synaptic free associations even provisionally pencilled into the GB vision yet.
(5.) The consciousness complex of AI. Increasingly intelligent agents are being built — such as the first synthetic avatar, Edd, in Second Life or those that will potentially win the Loebner Prize. A U$100,000 award is being offered for the first machine which passes the Turing test. In the 2008 competition, the machine which came closest was Elbot. It managed to convince 1 in 4 of its testers it was a human and not a machine, but despite fooling 25% of its testers it still did not achieve the 30% threshold to pass the Turing test. Elbot is the brainchild of and was developed by Fred Roberts, an American based in Hamburg. The Turing test for Elbot was conducted under the direction of Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at Reading University, on 11 October 2008.
My own simple test with Elbot shows that whilst its natural language programming (NLP) algorithms may be more advanced than its predecessors, it is far from conscious about the questions it's asked --- compared with the alertness of a human:
At point of site activation, Elbot asked me, "What mood are you in?" I typed in "indifferent".
Elbot then asked, "What put you in this indifferent mood?"
I typed in "You."
Elbot replied: "Fatal Error 42: Omission of Superfluous Input."
Elbot then asked, "What put you in this indifferent mood?"
I typed in "You."
Elbot replied: "Fatal Error 42: Omission of Superfluous Input."
I did this deliberately; my childhood curiosity of, "What if I don't do what's expected?" surfaces randomly and the coincidental humor generated is most welcome.
Evidently, further iterations of intelligent agents like Elbot will need to occur before AI can interpret meaning --- much less be consciously aware of any hidden subtleties or sub-text within our communications --- and decipher sufficiently to elicit a reasoned and appropriate response, in order to help accelerate the attainment of a nuanced problem-solving Global Brain.
Humor aside, it may be worthwhile to state here that the GB limitations arise from several sources.
Firstly, studies on the brain are ongoing and as yet incomplete so any attempts to construct a global network of data neurons that function and free associate like the brain are bound to have missing pieces and synaptic connections; we can’t wholesale copy or do a “brain upload” of what we don’t fully know (and don't know we don't know) yet. Secondly, since the GB is a metaphor rather than a definitive there remains a tremendous amount of ambiguity about its potential, purpose, direction, velocity and ultimate truths. Thirdly, healthy debates continue over some of the tests which may be applied to various constituents of the Global Brain (including how to define and measure intelligence — is it via IQ tests which are known to be culturally biased; how equivalent to human intelligence is the artificial intelligence being incorporated into networked algorithms; and how to effectively manage and co-ordinate productive participation (assuming the “collective humanity versus self interest” dichotomies are resolvable).
For those interested in the field of Neuroscience, please refer to these resources:
The Global Brain: the application of artificial intelligence
Let’s turn now to the element of Artificial Intelligence which supplements human intelligence in the GB construct and how machines are defined as “intelligent” or otherwise. It's relevant because we've mentioned the intelligent avatar, Edd, in Second Life as well as Elbot and, when this series covers the Singularity and the potential contribution of AI to expedite its realization, it will become obvious we need to introduce it here.
THE TURING TEST
The Turing test was first explicated in the British mathematician Alan Turing’s 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Instead of posing the question, “Can machines think?” Turing devised an equivalent of the ‘Imitation Game’ for machines. In this scenario, a panel of judges assesses from printed text responses whether the responder is a human or a machine. If the machine fools 30% of the panel then it is considered to have passed the Turing test. In the original ‘Imitation Game’ it was a party piece much like ‘Charades’ in which a single judge has to guess whether the responder is a man or a woman according to the typed out replies they provide to a series of gender-neutral questions such as, “What is the color of your hair?”
Here's a modern visual example of how 'The Imitation Game' is supposed to work:
Turing’s 1950 paper is being interpreted in different ways by Artificial Intelligence experts and designers. Its limitations have been noted and expanded upon with the creations and critiques of Eliza, a computer program designed by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966, which parodied a Rogerian therapist, and Parry, developed by the psychiatrist Kenneth Colby, in 1972. The transcript of the interaction between Eliza (The Doctor) and Parry (The Patient) in 1973, linked over ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, created by the US Department of Defense) makes for interesting reading:
Since human intelligence is itself such an ambiguous and complex area, ours and future generations will have to design a complementary series of tests which extend upon Turing's test for machine intelligence. Text-based assessments do not reflect how sensory intakes, such as audio-visual and touch, form a substantive part of human intelligence and facilitate our decision making processes; everything from reading danger signs, feeling temperature affects, flight or fight stimuli and the fostering of social interaction with others based on pheromonic, audio, haptic and body language information.
Regardless of its flaws, the Turing test remains the benchmark for assessing a machine’s ability to at least imitate the human process of thinking and proxy being intelligent. It's commonly accepted we have not yet reached the stage where a machine is conscious in the way humans are and the Turing test avoids opening up this avenue for exploratory discussion — and so shall we, for now.
The Global Brain: a need to time travel and be cross-cultural
Instead here's an open challenge for those interested and involved in the GB's development to seek and source relevant and quality materials to inform and inspire its construction. It may be the case that the GB concept pre-dates currently accepted literature since the majority of this literature focuses on Western paradigms and predominantly English-language sources. H.G. Wells, Teilhard de Chardin and now Kelly have become integrated into the Western meme for GB in the same way McDonalds has for hamburgers. Yet McDonalds did not invent the hamburger and nor did they originate the rearing of livestock to produce them. Wells et al were influenced by the great minds who preceded them, including: Aristotle, Galileo, da Vinci, Copernicus, Tesla, Schopenhauer, Newton, Babbage, etc. and they were the products of neo-Classical education.
Critically, there are resources in French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and the other major languages which are not necessarily from the Classical heritage and which have not yet been plumbed for their gold nuggets on the Global Brain and the possibility that, conceptually, it has existed since homosapiens first wandered this Earth and that, technologically, the frameworks that offer solutions may already be emerging from those sources.
To build a truly GLOBAL Brain we need to THINK GLOBALLY.
As a preliminary example, here's some Oriental opinion from NCKU VP Feng: Global Brain Movement: An Asia- Pacific Perspective
There is also analysis by Nathalie Villa, Assistant Professor of Computing, Université de Perpignan in France, who examined land records from 1260 to 1340 to establish what is, in her analysis, to be the world’s oldest social network and some attempt at a “group mind” --- which is another term that has been designated to the GB:
The concept of “group minds” can also be traced back to food webs in ancient society:
* http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060102&ct=1
Additionally, the human propensity to merge thinking, develop “group minds,” physically collaborate with a unified mindset or to try to move towards one universal set of rules (global consciousness) for any particular society is a priori evidenced in:
(ii.) the founding of every major religion;
(iii.) the formation of laws — Plato’s Republic, Corn Laws in the UK, the American Constitution and more;
(iv.) the cessation of the Warring States in China and the creation of what Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, called “one country under one sky” (and inherent in the 2008 Beijing Olympics logo characters, the concept of “one world, one dream” --- with one universal mind); and
(v.) the creation of both the Elizabethan and Victorian Empires via exploration and unification.
Therefore, we can note continuous historical attempts towards convergence, “one over everything and anything” principles and practices (one Head of State ruling over multiple territories) and a certain amount of challenges along the way (persecution, heresy, the Reformation). In the same manner there is an emergence of thought and will to create ONE UNIFIED GLOBAL BRAIN.
The Global Brain: optimal and free or bound by deficiencies?
According to Howard Bloom, during an interview in 1997 to discuss The Lucifer Principle, he refers to the analysis of Gerald Edelman, the American biologist who won the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the immune system of and who co-authored A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination. Bloom noted:
50% of the brain cells are killed off through apoptosis in the first year of life. Those which don’t match the challenges in the baby’s environment are the ones to go. It is the principle of “to him who hath it shall be given, from he who hath not even what he hath shall be taken away” at work.
Later in adulthood, studies have shown that at any time point a proportion of our brain is *dormant* (“under-exercised” may be preferable) whilst the other is machining away — depending on the task at hand. For example, if we’re reading Candide by Voltaire in French we access our left hemisphere and if we’re making a mathematical estimate we access our right lobes.
Academic research postulates we are using only 10% of our brain processing power and others contradict this postulation:
In simple mathematical terms, if we are building and connecting these networks and machines based on applying (100 — N) % of our thinking abilities and only 10% of people actively engage on the networks / machines --- this 10% not encompassing the 5 billion plus people who have no Internet access or have never used a computer…………………..
By the time we form the Global Brain will it genuinely be optimal, democratic and diverse or will it actually be factorially less efficient and informed than the brains of 1,000 of the most intelligent, well-travelled, well-connected, polyglot polymaths in the world?
The Global Brain: Linked Data's current disconnect
I'm compelled to comment on this because it's an example of some modern scientists and computer technologists not abiding by Nikolai Tesla's wise adages:
“Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.”
“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
Here's what the Linked Data contributors' vision of how nodal components of the Semantic Web currently being created looks like:
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We need to ask ourselves whether this representation is ad hoc, random and bolt-on or whether clear foresight and post-construction filtering and refinement have been applied to structure the diagram and its constituent parts in an organic and holistic way. Frankly, it's difficult to make head and tails of the various interconnections and it looks like a shapeless spore.
Now here's my version of what the diagram should look like (this is a sample only and contains incomplete information due to lack of space which will be remedied in my solution proposal later):
Evidently, this approach leverages some knowledge of organic chemical molecules; DBpedia, FOAF profiles, GeneID and DBLP RKB Explorer (other clusters will emerge over time) have been designated akin to the core benzene rings around which the interactive elements react / attract / attach in much the same way electrons dock onto specific XYZ locations during nucleophilic and electrophilic substitution reactions in ketones, aldehydes, polymers and more.
We can even re-model it and re-build it either like a C60 fullerene, a carbon nano-tube or the intertwining of the DNA helix themselves. Organic nature has elegant structure so does our brains and so should the "show + tell" diagrams we present. A friend calls it "show + Twain" which means synchronizing the visuals with the facts, figures and the context, by the way.
This difference in how each of us thinks and perceives data sets, information and linkages to derive knowledge and Enlightenment is an example of the need for humans to cross-pollinate our knowhow from seemingly mutually exclusive, discrete and silo information into another sphere to:
(i.) make more sense of the information we're being presented with;
(ii.) find solutions to the world's serious issues that require "clarity of group think"; and
(iii.) increase the real utility of natural human intelligence above 10 percent --- hopefully by improving collective and connective intelligence.
This is important in the issue of the Global Brain movement because my present observation is that the distinction between 'Linked Data" and "Meaningful Data" which form the definitions for what constitutes a Semantic Web are not trivial ones.
We can link Jobs to Apple as discrete items. Is this meaningful? Not really. Not unless we had historical context that Jobs was the co-founder of Apple and that there is a market "feeling" / "sensation" / "sentiment" the company would under-perform unless he was at its helm and healthy.
Ergo, linking and meaning are not necessarily commutative or equivalent.
Although it should be noted the Semantic Web seems to be an attempt at a "Rubik cube of contextualization" an organic molecule may transpire to be a better proxy for the Semantic Web since our neurons, our synapses and our transmittance of intellectual matter is --- like DNA --- a biochemical phenomena rather than a processual iterative series of blocks or cellular automata which are bound by translation limited to finite spaces.
This is how the Semantic Web stack currently looks for those readers who are interested:
Below is an example of how information can be better visually represented and connected, including the Linked Objects Data diagram. Debategraph is the intuitive sense-making solution founded and developed by David Price (who has a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in organisational learning and environmental policy and who has previously worked with institutions ranging from the BBC to the European Commission) and Peter Baldwin (a former Australian cabinet minister). The back-end content administration may look as if it observes "Rubik cube systemization" but the front-end visualization is clearly based on organic molecules simulation.
19MAY2009 --- UPDATE
David Price has now cross-pollinated the Linking Open Data diagram with debategraph as I proposed above like so (please click on the image and be directed to the debategraph site):
Perhaps it would make sense for those involved in the Linked Data and Semantic Web movements to swap notes with the debategraph team for the purposes of moving the organizational and visualization tools needed for the future of the Semantic Web and the creation of the Global Brain forward, collectively and coherently.
As I've noted from the outset and will continue to abide by, my position is: I do not have the definitive and absolute answers about the Global Brain or the ultimate killer computer solution(s)........YET. Neither does anyone else. It's all work-in-dynamic-organic-progress just like the rest of human civilization.
We're simply on this exploration of Enlightenment together and the main criteria we need to observe is reciprocity of respect.
Then one day we may achieve this holistic organic existence:
C-MODEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS
After distilling and synching my father's coma situation with the history of the Web and what we currently know about the brain, a model is emerging about what I believe the contributory elements of consciousness could be. Let me share this diagram here.
It may be possible that this C-model of consciousness may help us to locate where consciousness actually resides (physically) in the brain. Over time, neuroscientists have isolated specific areas in our lobes and cortex which govern our ability to communicate; information travels in via our primary auditory and visual cortex to the posterior speech zone. This zone encompasses the Wernicke area and from there the signals traverse towards Broca's area before reaching the primary motor cortex which allows us to say the words we read aloud. Likewise, there are zones in our brains which are command/control nodes to enable us to articulate our physiological movements, e.g. blink our eyes, raise our arms. Meanwhile our creativity has been established by neuroscientists to derive mostly in the right hemisphere of our brains; this is explained in Robert J. Sternberg's book, Handbook of Creativity.
There is also an ability in our neural networks of cognisance, or the identification of people's faces and voices which enable us to refer to the nature of our relationships with them. More about this is covered in Alfred Binet's book, The Mind and the Brain, and is also covered in detail in James Russell's papers, Cognisance and Cognitive Sciences.
The brain's coherence component is experimented in an interesting way by Dan Winter:
Next, our understanding of how culture affects our brains and the way in which it stores that knowledge as well as evolve with it has been commented upon in books such as Brain, Culture and the Human Spirit by James B. Ashbrook. With the collaboration element, the American Optometric Association has written about vision being the "collaboration between the eyes and the brain". There is also research from Gazzaniga et al from the University of California Davis on the Collaboration Between the Hemispheres of a Callosotomy Patient as well as Jacqueline Liederman's The Dynamics of Interhemispheric Collaboration and Hemispheric Control.
Arguably, some readers may query whether "consideration" is not simply another word for the functional process of thinking itself. In this case "consideration" means the contextualization of events and sensory intakes which elicits an empathetic exchange between us and an external object (this could be another person or an animal). It is the source of.....humanity, charity, altruism and love.
Now let's imagine what would happen if we triangulated these areas which are being identified as source spots for cognisance, coherence, communication, creativity, command/control, consideration, collaboration and culture.
Might it be possible that that triangulation would lead us to the discovery of the precise single location of consciousness? Or could it be possible that consciousness is a thin cover of synapses which wraps over and traverses each of these specific areas?
Let's also apply both sides of our hemipshere (reasoning on the left and imagination/intuition on our right) and test out how this C-model of consciousness applies to the Web and its development.
If we examine the history of the Web, coders started with the command / control functionality. This still forms the core of how sites section and gate off different servers and clusters of user accounts. Over time, the communication node and layer has been built up (think emails, threads, IM). Following this arrived collaboration tools (think Wikipedia, wordpress mu, Typepad). Cognisance appeared when people were able to post avatars and photos with which to identify themselves to a social group. It's also extended to the whole "Social Graph" and recommendations ecology and leads towards RDFs and KR (knowledge representation).
With the Semantic Web, what's being sought is coherence. This is a more structured and unified way for humans and machines to understand the content being input, searched, surfaced and shared.
The next stage will be to factor in culture context (particularly language, perception, values, concerns about global issues --- differences and commonalities).
Finally, we can start being truly creative on and with the Web.
All of this is a holistic approach to our own consciousness as a species, on+off line.
SO THAT'S OUR THE CHALLENGE: taking what we already know about the brain and re-imaging it or generating evolved sense from it to locate consciousness and then trying to ascertain whether it can be proxied or replicated in the "Global Brain" and consciousness that's being produced on the Web.
As I've noted from the outset and will continue to abide by, my position is: I do not have the definitive and absolute answers about the Global Brain or the ultimate killer computer solution(s)........YET. Neither does anyone else. It's all work-in-dynamic-organic-progress just like the rest of human civilization.
We're simply on this exploration of Enlightenment together and the main criteria we need to observe is reciprocity of respect.
Then one day we may achieve this holistic organic existence:
What an interesting collective journey to experience and share.................
*******************************************************************************************************************************
THE GLOBAL BRAIN: SERIES CONTINUATION
Still to look forward to in the associated postings will be:
- collective intelligence (human, machine and superorganisms) including some insights on the work currently being conducted at the MIT Center on Collective Intelligence
- major schools of thought on the Singularity
- key proponents and detractors such as Ray Kurzweil, Vernor Vinge, Stephen Hawkings, Richard Dawkins, Pierre Levy, Peter Thiel/Mark Zuckerberg, and Anthony Berglas
- relationships with Moore's Law, Aasimov's science fiction, William Gibson's Neuromancer and other creative efforts
- consciousness paradigms from Confucius to Clay Shirky to Princeton's Global Consciousness Project
- current and theoretical technological models on achieving the Singularity
- economic implications and GAIA revolutions
- gender and cultural identity within the Global Brain matrix
- human existence and potential neural saturation post-Singularity
More detailed source references will also be provided in the near future. Thanks for your patience and your constructive comments.
*******************************************************************************************************************************
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Twain has a B.Sc. Hons maths degree, has been to management school and specializes in technology and corporate strategy. Previously she's worked in CEO-Chairman's Office, Tier 1 bank and focussed on Strategic Investments (TMT). She's also worked in dotcoms and her article on asset-backed securities was published when she was 22. This is what she looks like:
Twain 360-2020
Video of the author
Previously, I made the conscious decision not to post any images of myself on or around this knol to allow the knol to stand up according to its own merits --- rather than attract readership based on the fact that I'm young and female.
During the year since its origination 'The Global Brain' knol has stood the test of time, been recognized in its own merits and won:
* Top Pick Knol
* Top Pick Author
* Best Knol, June 2009
* Honorable Mention for knols created in November 2008
Until today, no one has seen a single image of the person whose mind sparked and weaved the content on this knol. The knol has had no "glamor" to sell itself, readers have purely appreciated it for the the open invitation to explore this topic; the width, prescience and relevance of the research; the writing and the possibilities ahead for our online communities and our collective intelligence.
We do live in societies where externalities are commented upon and attract attention when, in fact, the wonder, beauty and goodies in our brains are even more interesting to explore!
Hopefully, those brains will be applied constructively for Humanity's sake.
Twain 360-2020
George Clooney + the UN want to hear from you
As per your helpful suggestion.......voi
http://knol.google.c
Murry Shohat
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Congratulations, Honorable Mention
We are very pleased to announce that this Knol is the Honorable Mention badge winner for English Knols created in November, 2008. Congratulations. You may view your award at http://knol.google.c
Top writers like you may benefit from participation in the 'Google Knol LinkedIn Group', located at http://www.linkedin.
Please consider joining with us to add your point of view. Knol is listening!
Great work, keep it up,
Murry Shohat and Peter Baskerville
Thank you for letting me know and thank you for putting in place community structures which promote best practices in Knol writing. It is in all our interests to foster authorship, originality of content, source citations and accreditations, and to let the quality of what we write help provide perspectives for others --- possibly exposing them to topics and knowhow they were previously unaware they were even seeking or interested in.
When I made my first small steps in frameworking and populating this knol, I had no idea that a knol that wasn't about medicine, baking a cake or historical event would gain the consistent and loyal readership it is.
It makes me very happy to know that people are discovering this Global Brain knol and maybe taking something positive from it with them on their online journeys.
kind regards,
Twain.
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Twain 360-2020
United Nations (UN): Our Conscious Web video entry
* http://www.youtube.c
There's a tremendous amount of content online which we need to CONTEXTUALIZE in a smarter way, collectively. From this we can gain clearer insights into people's cultures, values and consciousness. Whilst awareness matters building the tools to convert that awareness into CONSTRUCTIVE ACTIONS matters even more.
Otherwise, they're simply words which get washed away in our streams of history.
I wish to encourage you to turn this comment into a Knol. Title it "George Clooney Wants to Hear From You."
Write a simple intro above your embedded YouTube video. After the video, ask for others to comment and invite them to suggest other YouTubes. This would be a great "unit of knowledge."
If you leave this as a comment only, it may be washed away. Do as you say: Constructive Action.
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Actually, I am developing (i,e., coding) frameworks and systems which try to complement the obvious gaps in the Semantic Web Stack which I refer to in this Global Brain knol. It's become part of my life mission to realize a Conscious Web.
In my analysis, it's simply not enough for organizations like the UN and other inter-governmental agencies to encourage us to TALK about or be aware of world issues. The tools which enable us to discern the context and consequences of our global consumption and interconnected political, social, financial and economic choices are simply not there..........yet.
If they were there, the severity of the global financial crisis, the impasse on climate change, the equivalent provision of education between developed and emerging economies, etc. would have either been decreased or increased with more effectiveness.
When I say a "Conscious Web" I mean one in which the tools are available to help us understand the context and consequences of our choices and actions across a range of major issues: consumption, climate change, education, global economies, etc.
The data structuring offered by semantic methodologies is a step in a good direction, but even here I'm happening upon ontology authoring tools which are not that advanced compared with what was built in the dotcom where I worked back in 1999!
So I find myself having to dust down my coding skills and apps development knowhow to try and move us towards 5 main objectives:
(1.) Contextualization of content --- not simply believing that tagging data according to RDF rules about people, places, companies, location etc. (with Natural Language Processing methodologies) enables us to really understand what content means. Unfortunately, RDF is still not the whole or holistic picture.
(2.) Consequentials of content --- there remains an opportunity gap in tracking whether a piece of marketing drives us to actual purchase and the entire chain of costs to the environment in that consumption.
(3.) Remuneration mechanisms for quality content and context.
(4.) Consumers becoming more integrated in the product value chain, including in the design of the product(s) and demand curve accuracy.
At the moment, manufacturers churn out products based on 3-5 year projections from management consultancy reports which either use unrepresentative population samples or become obsolete models by the time the product is in production ====> over/under supply.
(5.) Smart near real-time inventory systems which match ACTUAL NEEDS rather than projected hopes of inflated sales (which lead to over-stocking and all of its associated energy wastage of warehousing and subsequent disposal --- not to mention the wastage in marketing a product that people might not actually need or want).
Whilst the likes of George Clooney lend some glamor to serious causes, there is still some way to go if Ban Ki-Moon the Secretary General of the UN's call for video submissions has only been viewed by less than 26,000 people in three weeks. Susan Boyle, the reality 'Britain's Got Talent' star managed to garner in excess of 100 million in a very short period of time.
When all's said and been PR'd with glamor, it will be up to the technologists (and I'm including Google) to step up to the plate and to code such a Conscious Web.
I'm simply one of the ants / bees / butterflies on this journey, :*).
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You obviously understand the need for simplified explanations as evangelism to the greater cause.
Murry
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* http://knol.google.c
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Twain 360-2020
C-model of Consciousness
* cognisance
* coherence
* communication
* creativity
* command / control
* consideration
* collaboration
* culture
Moreover, perhaps these elements are also contributing and evolutionary factors to the Web and its development.
Twain 360-2020
Content is king, context is queen and consciousness are their progeny --- (C) Twain (刘）, 2009
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Anonymous
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Film on consciousness
My name is Alex Gabbay. I am a filmmaker based in the UK currently making a film on consciousness. The idea sprung from a forthcoming exhibition on the brain involving eminent scientists and artists. I am contributing to the exhibition by making a film on consciousness that provokes discussion but does not pretend to have the answers.
For it, I am talking to neuroscientists, artists and anthropologists about their work on consciousness. I was extremely happy to find your knol on the Global Brain, while researching Berners-Lee and other contributors. I feel it is extremely important to include this perspective in the film.
Your own personal motivation in the introduction was moving. My motivation is to provoke discussion on a subject that to most of us defies definition and yet defines us and our world.
Is there anyway of getting in touch with you for further discussion re the film?
Alex
Hi Twain,
Sorry forgot to give you my email address: consciousnessfilm@go
Many thanks
Alex
Thanks for your comments and contact details.
Consciousness is a fascinating and complex topic to choose for a film. There are multiple facets to it:
* cultural --- certain nationalities are encouraged to be more aware and to educate themselves about awareness than others, e.g. Indians and Orientals as a heritage from Buddhism and Confucianism
* professional --- the creative arts relative to the corporate professionals and the scientists. For example, if we examine musicians and film-makers like Sting and Michael Moore they constantly talk about "increasing global awareness" about an issue. In contrast, bankers and lawyers refer to "provide information" which is about a processual rather than philosophical approach. Scientists speak in neurological and technical terms about "activation" of the different cortex, lobes and synapses.
* technological --- at the time of writing, no man-made machine has consciousness. We can stimulate most of the senses: program it to process, to detect objects within a vicinity (infra-red sensors), touch via haptic surfaces like the iPhone, aural detection, olfactory collars for smell and even walk (please see Honda's creation, Asimo).
Consciousness is not about pure process alone. It's about an internal fusion and propagation of ephemerals, emotions, perceptions, hopes, dreams, desires, imaginations and even how we each uniquely engage with a film which we then share and disseminate with others. With films too, our consciousness is dependent on our cultural reference frames. If we're not conscious of 'The Metropolis' by Fritz Lang then we perceive 'Blade Runner' and 'AI: Artificial Intelligence' and the forthcoming 'Avatar' in completely different context to how we would otherwise. This may explain why, for example, Chinese audiences may not quite grasp the film conceptually --- even before we take literal linguistic lost in translation issues into account.
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Andreas Kemper
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Knol Translation Points
You get 136.971 Knol Translation Points for The Best Knol of the Month May 2009.
This Translations Points are part of a virtual exchange trading system.
You can find your account on this site:
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And you can use it here:
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Please nominate and vote Knols in the July-Contest:
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Andreas
Andreas Kemper
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Best Knol of the Month June 2009
Twain, your Knol is the winner of the Contest Best Knol of the Month June 2009! This Knol gets 9 Votes and the first place!
In the next days you get Knol Translation Points.
You know how to write good Knols. So please nominate new candidates for the July-Contest and help to find the best Knols by voting.
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Andreas
Andreas Kemper
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Best Knol of the Month Contest - June 2009
Someone is voting for your Knol. The Contest ends June 30.
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You can also make proposals or vote for your own or other Knols.
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Andreas Kemper
Thanks and it's good to know people are finding this knol useful.
There seems to be a whole ecosystem within Knol (like the monthly contest) which I'm not aware of. I've written a handful of knols to share knowledge and topics of interest with others, and also as a reminder to myself of what I was thinking about at a specific time-point / continuum.
Meanwhile there are others who are fostering an entire knowledge community including standards, user codes of conduct, competitions, etc.
There's a lot of merit to community-initiated participation like the contests. Good luck with it.
best,
Twain
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I like to invite you to nominate and vote for knols. The contest lives from the voters. You can vote for three different knols, also for your own knol.
Best
Andreas
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