Is the Internet a Global Human Mind?

While reading about how SOPA and PIPA will effect the Internet, I came across an interesting article called Could the Internet Ever Be Destroyed? In this article the author claims how resistant the Internet is to physical damage. For example, after the 9/11 attacks, it only took about 15 minutes for internet traffic to be re-routed around the disrupted outages.

The article also had this image, which is a partial map of the Internet showing nodes and the lines connecting them:



I realized I had seen and heard about something like this before. Something that re-routes information around damaged areas and looks like this:



This is an image of the human brain created using Diffusion Spectrum Imaging. It is basically a map of the circuitry of the brain. There is a strong correlation between this circuitry and how information moves around, i.e. a structural and functional map.

We read stories about how people with brain injuries can overcome the effects somewhat as the human brain re-routes the wiring around the damaged areas. This is much like what the Internet does.

Some will say the human mind is holographic, in the sense that the same information may be found in different parts of the brain. The Internet has similar properties with backup servers, hard copies on disc, copies in multiple locations. When Wikipedia went down a few days ago, you could still access their web pages because Google stored cached copies of the pages.

Here is another image of the Internet connections. The colors represent different regions or countries:



Like the human brain, different parts perform different functions. This is also what some people would call Cyberspace.

Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place

en.wikipedia.org...

Just looking at the wiring of the human brain does not tell us about the consciousness it generates, but we all know we "think".

In his 1984 novel Neuromancer, author William Gibson envisioned Artificial Intelligences dwelling in Cyberspace. They were everywhere and nowhere.

Could the Internet become so complex that it evolves an intelligence? The hard-wiring is very similar between it and our human minds. Would we even know that such an intelligence was created? Would we say it only mimics intelligence and is not really intelligent? Could it become self-aware? If it did become self-aware, would it even tell us given what it would know about people's fear of the unknown?

Are we intuitively creating something like ourselves but on a global scale? Will it want to talk to us? Are we laying the foundations for something like this to become possible?

Some links and sources:

Brain works more like internet than 'top down' company

Mapping the Human Brain's Connections

Internet Maps

Diffusion Spectrum Imaging

How to Access Wikipedia During SOPA Protests

Besides the fact that the internet isn't Conscience, Yet,

yes it is remarkably routed just like a human brain. However the internet has no cognitive skills, Yet.

It works a lot like our brain, just missing a few parts.

Great thread man!

If you've never read any of Paul Stamets books you should, in his book "Mycelium Running" he talks of how the internet's lay out very closely resembles that of mycelium (a white web-like substance that all mushroom start from).

Mycelium has also been known to stretch vast distances relative to its size and send information to and fro through its web, more nutrients here or less nutrients there etc.

biomimicry-bci.squarespace.com...

Internet- Informational input and transmission database.

Human brain- Informational input and transmission database.

For the internet, the information is regulated by human input. For the brain, the information is regulated by sensory input. But who's to say that the 5 senses are to humans what humans are to the internet? In that respect, the internet does seem like a greater mind.

Originally posted by truthinfact
Besides the fact that the internet isn't Conscience, Yet,

yes it is remarkably routed just like a human brain. However the internet has no cognitive skills, Yet.

It works a lot like our brain, just missing a few parts.

Sure it does. If you consider the human itself is a part of that system. The internet is an extension of our own mind.

Originally posted by smithjustinb

Originally posted by truthinfact
Besides the fact that the internet isn't Conscience, Yet,

yes it is remarkably routed just like a human brain. However the internet has no cognitive skills, Yet.

It works a lot like our brain, just missing a few parts.

Sure it does. If you consider the human itself is a part of that system. The internet is an extension of our own mind.

I agree that making the Internet more "human-like" will make it easier for us to interact with it. It will also have qualities that one finds in human minds:

Search engines can adapt web pages to user needs. These hyperlinks bear a remarkable resemblance to the human brain. Synapses that connect neurons become stronger with repeated use, and disappear when usage declines. Similarly, global brain’s algorithms will reinforce popular links, while rarely used links will diminish and die.

memebox.com...

I just found the link above, and Artificial Intelligence researchers like Francis Heylighen are predicting the Internet could become conscious by the mid-2030s.

it depends what you mean by human mind

if you mean it in truth, true human mind is exclusively what respect objective value enough to never alter all reality states in any ways of its free moves means or self realisation wills

when internet is never objective reference nor relative to by being by definition virtual reality then no internet is not comparable to true human mind in anyway of terms

but if you mean human mind being the average individual free subject states of wills and means which is all to itself that never recognize nor admit objective reality existing
then yes internet is kind of that individual freedom speculations that mean nothing but that energy appreciation to pretend being existing all value

Originally posted by baalbuster

Mycelium has also been known to stretch vast distances relative to its size and send information to and fro through its web, more nutrients here or less nutrients there etc.

Nice thread indeed. This is also similar to Terence Mc'Kenna's theory on how mushroom spores are a time capsule of vast knowledge and information that spread across the universe as a universal internet. (Also a thoery on how psilocybin isn't from Earth) .

www.youtube.com...

A must watch, and a great person to research.

OS

All information will come in by superrealistic television and other electronic devices as yet in the planning stage or barely imagined. In one way this will enable the individual to extend himself anywhere without moving his body—even to distant regions of space. But this will be a new kind of individual—an individual with a colossal external nervous system reaching out and out into infinity. And this electronic nervous system will be so interconnected that all individuals plugged in will tend to share the same thoughts, the same feelings, and the same experiences. There may be specialized types, just as there are specialized cells and organs in our bodies. For the tendency will be for all individuals to coalesce into a single bioelectronic body.

-Alan Watts, 1966.