Is the internet making us a hive mind?

I'll start out with some stories.

Learning who knows something or where we can find information, rather than remembering the information itself, is a way to expand our mental reach, and the Web has proven better at that than any resource in human history. When we are online, we are essentially linked to a vast hive mind, known in psychology as a transactive memory system, which allows us to access the collective knowledge of anyone and everyone.

The Internet as a Hive Mind

Other studies in the past have shown how our minds are being reshaped by the Internet. Like the story above says, we are losing the ability to know things and instead rely upon looking them up online. This allows us to be experts on specific problems we need to solve. The interesting thing here is that our memory location is being moved from our brains to the hive on the internet. Our minds are using the internet instead of the organic tissue in our brains to store information. It is completely changing how human psychology works.

We are placing our knowledge on the internet to be critiqued by other members of the hive as if we were all connected into a psychic network. It really is functionally a psychic network.

What is a hive mind? Let's look on Wikipedia to determine if it makes sense to describe our new society as one.

*Collective consciousness or collective intelligence, concepts in sociology and philosophy
*Culture A collective of knowledge, art, artifacts, symbols and social ritual
*The apparent consciousness of colonies of social insects such as ants, bees and termites
*Swarm intelligence, the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial
*Universal mind, a type of universal higher consciousness or source of being in some esoteric beliefs Group mind (science fiction), a type of collective consciousness

Wikipedia: Hive Mind (may refer to)

The Internet is a collective consciousness. Insects and bees and termites use the same technology. Humans are acting as decentralized, self-organized systems that are artificial in nature. The new human psychology seems to match what Wikipedia thinks a hive mind would be like.

---------- This leaves reality and leads to speculation----------

An evolution of thought like going from a normal human civilization to a psychic hive mind is basically as big as saying we are a new species. We might as well be, with such major changes to our psychology. We are going from acting like predators to acting like insects, especially ants.

Was the Mayan Calendar right? Was 2012 the year singularity was reached?* The year humankind evolved into a new species? Is it the start of a New Age? These thoughts certainly make a degree of sense.

So here are a few more thoughts of mine. Bees use quantum physics to communicate with each other, and it would make sense to assume they are using this to assist their hive mind nature. Quantum physics can be interpreted in the many-worlds interpretation that uses a 5th dimension and multiple universes to explain the behavior of certain particles and waves.

Could their be extra-dimensional life out there that lives in the 5th dimension and is a hive mind? If the government made a deal with them to get their technology, would that explain why the new technology we have today doesn't seem to be made for humans?

I'll keep on speculating here - are we going to split into two species as half of the people get left behind acting like normal humans while the other half "ascend" to the Hive Mind? Could this lead to an apocalyptic war? Or could it simply lead to a symbiotic relationship?

Finally, here is a spiritual piece written about bees. A religion based on bees would be an interesting turn of events.

The Spiritual Power of the Humble Bee

For myself,i don't think so,maybe because im older and my personality and outlook on life,value system etc is already formed and entrenched.Also im a very sensible down to earth person who keeps in touch with nature and create art,gardening,cooking,i have lived most of my life till about 2011 without a pc and internet access-so for us older people,i would think not,no hive mind for us.Also we tend to be,me and my family,very eccentric and individualistic in thought process and personality,we have a lotta soul i guess

I would perhaps be concerned for the multitudes of shallow materialistic easily influenced people out there.I call them plastic people,those yuppie types.They seem generic and soulless and empty.

The internet is a form of communication.

Its an opportunity for all of us to learn more about each other and that's a good thing.

At some point, I believe the internet itself will become self aware... if it hasn't already.

The Internet is essentially a better Library.

I see where you are coming from, and agree to some degree.

I love learning new things and taking things on board (ie remember them which is what learning is), not just think "i'll Duckduckgo it".

However I have various tools I use to save things I want to keep for reference, or things that I do not feel I need to learn as such, but want access to. I use DropBox for documents, ebooks etc, and have also set up a website which I use for dropping notes, links etc to myself - things I will get back to at some point, or might need to refer to again, but as I use them infrequently I do not need to "learn" them.

So yes, I guess I have changed how I learn, get and store information.

Re your thoughts on people splitting into two species - I see that as perhaps people who are familiar with computers and those who do not have access to them. We are all very fortunate here on this forum to be computer literate, but there are whole areas of the world where use of computers is almost unknown - having a cell phone does not really count, imho. I am thinking of Africa and certain parts of remote Asia where people have basic cell phones but little or no familiarity with PCs (*spit*), or Macs.

Has this split already started happening with the birth of the nerd??

a reply to: darkbake

Interesting idea, and this was a fascinating read, until you went off the deep end with the 2012/extra dimensional stuff.
S&F

Yep, agreed - a massive library at your fingertips.

I remember as a kid going to the local library to look up things in the encyclopedia for school research.

Now you can't argue with someone as they just whip out a phone, look up the query and the point is proven.

originally posted by: Kashai
The Internet is essentially a better Library.

Hive mind, I don't think so.

Mob mentality of the anonymous ignorants, that's closer.

Humans have always strived towards faster and more complex ways of communicating with each other. We're social creatures and humans reaaly seem to like having their ideas heard by others.

We went from using strictly sounds and non-verbal communication, to spoken languages and ways of communicating abstract ideas and concepts. We created written languages to store and share these concepts. This allowed all sorts of amazing things like preserving knowledge and building off knowledge learned by those that came before.

From there it went all kinds of crazy. We went from engraving things in stone and such to mediums that were smaller and lighter, allowing information to be more easily transferred, distributed and stored in greater densities. There were whole buildings where people could travel to and learn someone else's knowledge.

Eventually, it became easier for the average person to write store and exchange information, so much so, that messenger services were used to carry information acrosse large distances. Now information was able to be disseminated across large areas and communication between people living in different places became possible.

Eventually, we realized electricity travelled even faster than horses, so we found a way to communicate information over large distances using electrical signals.

That one was a real game changer. We started off with only being able to send short electrical pulses across large distances, the information being transmitted being determined by the lengths of the pulses, but then some brilliant bastard found a way to send sound as an electrical signal.

Well that just lead on to all sorts of grand things like telephones and radios and all those fairly awesome things. Then this other smart as # dude figured out that pictures could be sent as electrical signals. Then some other dudes realized you could represent a lot of different # with electric signals and eventually some other smart as # dudes decided to combine the two ideas and then come up with a way to let everybody use all those electric signals to send more to each other that all represents some piece of information being stored and shared by people.

All because, people have always liked the sound of their own thoughts and really have always just wanted a better way for their #ty ideas and opinions to be heard and loved by others.

Phew

Honestly, I'm not sure about the 5th dimension stuff, but our brains do seem do seem to be adapting to the new instantaneous way we share and communicate with each other. I don't think it's a sudden change though. I think the way our brains process and store information has changed over time in accordance with how easily collective information is accessible.

I imagine if some disaster were to take this technology away, within a generation or two humans would be back to storing larger amounts of information in their brain.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this ridiculous rambling mess is that the internet and the way our brains are adapting to it seems like a logical next step if you look back at the history of communicatons advances.

(Also, I make no claim of any historical accuracy in any of that rambling timeline earlier. It was just a very, very rough generalization.:cheers

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
a reply to: darkbake

Interesting idea, and this was a fascinating read, until you went off the deep end with the 2012/extra dimensional stuff.
S&F

I warned I would be speculating there. I don't put as much stock in that stuff as the stuff before it.

a reply to: 1984hasarrived


Exactly. And also one can buy an and acre of land and arrange through the Internet to allocate and pay for all the materials, permits, architect and crew needed to put a two story home their.

You can buy a car and have it delivered to your residence and then there is food, pet needs, repairs if you are a homeowner, movies. gaming, access to government services, auto parts, music, videos, criminal reports on potential employees and as well as dating services, Mortgages, Hotels, Flights, Holiday shoping and so on....

I recently saved about $400 American because I needed to replace in my car its entire A/C system.

This is because I have access to the Internet.

a reply to: darkbake

Indeed you did.
This thread's given me a lot to think about...Thanks!

Yea, well I think this is the most interesting 2012 theory so far.

another interesting read: how the internet makes you think you're smarter than you really are

a reply to: darkbake

I make it that we have always been a hive mind. For most of our histories we have relied on the prevailing meme, the tribal commonality, the everyday ins and outs of our tribes and communities. I think that most people have always relied on being part of the tribe rather than seeking to expand their individuality. What information necessary for survival was built into those tribal groupings, into the lore, the stories of the tribe, and unnecessary information was just not noticed or thought about much.

So I think your point is good. But not that it is making us into a hive mind, just that for those who can think about it, it is now more evident than before.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Even if we have always somewhat been this way, we were never fully connected like we are now. Since our connectedness is using computer technology, does this mean we are now posthuman? Our knowledge no longer being stored in our minds, but in computers that we view as synonymous with "mind"?

I agree.to an extent. How is it different than the many books I have read and suddenly connect some dots and go back to them for reference?

a reply to: darkbake

Mate I can't disagree but I can not agree either. I hate this idea

originally posted by: darkbake
I'll start out with some stories.

Learning who knows something or where we can find information, rather than remembering the information itself, is a way to expand our mental reach, and the Web has proven better at that than any resource in human history. When we are online, we are essentially linked to a vast hive mind, known in psychology as a transactive memory system, which allows us to access the collective knowledge of anyone and everyone.

The Internet as a Hive Mind

Other studies in the past have shown how our minds are being reshaped by the Internet. Like the story above says, we are losing the ability to know things and instead rely upon looking them up online. This allows us to be experts on specific problems we need to solve. The interesting thing here is that our memory location is being moved from our brains to the hive on the internet. Our minds are using the internet instead of the organic tissue in our brains to store information. It is completely changing how human psychology works.

We are placing our knowledge on the internet to be critiqued by other members of the hive as if we were all connected into a psychic network. It really is functionally a psychic network.

What is a hive mind? Let's look on Wikipedia to determine if it makes sense to describe our new society as one.

*Collective consciousness or collective intelligence, concepts in sociology and philosophy
*Culture A collective of knowledge, art, artifacts, symbols and social ritual
*The apparent consciousness of colonies of social insects such as ants, bees and termites
*Swarm intelligence, the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial
*Universal mind, a type of universal higher consciousness or source of being in some esoteric beliefs Group mind (science fiction), a type of collective consciousness

Wikipedia: Hive Mind (may refer to)

The Internet is a collective consciousness. Insects and bees and termites use the same technology. Humans are acting as decentralized, self-organized systems that are artificial in nature. The new human psychology seems to match what Wikipedia thinks a hive mind would be like.

---------- This leaves reality and leads to speculation----------

An evolution of thought like going from a normal human civilization to a psychic hive mind is basically as big as saying we are a new species. We might as well be, with such major changes to our psychology. We are going from acting like predators to acting like insects, especially ants.

Was the Mayan Calendar right? Was 2012 the year singularity was reached?* The year humankind evolved into a new species? Is it the start of a New Age? These thoughts certainly make a degree of sense.

So here are a few more thoughts of mine. Bees use quantum physics to communicate with each other, and it would make sense to assume they are using this to assist their hive mind nature. Quantum physics can be interpreted in the many-worlds interpretation that uses a 5th dimension and multiple universes to explain the behavior of certain particles and waves.

Could their be extra-dimensional life out there that lives in the 5th dimension and is a hive mind? If the government made a deal with them to get their technology, would that explain why the new technology we have today doesn't seem to be made for humans?

I'll keep on speculating here - are we going to split into two species as half of the people get left behind acting like normal humans while the other half "ascend" to the Hive Mind? Could this lead to an apocalyptic war? Or could it simply lead to a symbiotic relationship?

Finally, here is a spiritual piece written about bees. A religion based on bees would be an interesting turn of events.

The Spiritual Power of the Humble Bee

II think too many people have other plans than just the two stated here. Interesting though. The info I give, I truly attempt to be creative instead of regurgitating the same info somebody else already thought of. For many people now, no thought was originally created by them, it was all studied and taught to them. They learned it. They downloaded it into their brain. The brain has so much info at this point, it believes the little bits and pieces of info learned and put together as being original. It sort of appears that way most times because it's not plagiarized. Putting sentences and words together that you didn't help invent is not real creation. Most people dont realize that the hive mind exists already to a degree. One example is the use of the alphabet. How many more new words can be invented from our alphabet before we completely run out of letter arrangements? Looks like we already are borderline AI.

Online forums with open discussion is their most looked forward to event. They waited a long time for this to happen. And so it has. I hope who ever they are are happy with their creations. All we can do is just contribute to the "log" and hope there will be one thing we said, that was never thought of that way before, and we get extra credit for it because it helped save someone somehow.

Internet is the most important tool of democracy in the years to come, and I agree with most of your post, even your computer serves a storing information mechanism, in a few years, you will use your mind to connect to it, and store or retrieve information just like in the matrix, fun times!