The Global Brain is a metaphor for the worldwide intelligent network formed by people together with the information and communication technologies that connect them into an "organic" whole. As the Internet becomes faster, more intelligent, more ubiquitous and more encompassing, it increasingly ties us together in a single information processing system, that functions like a "brain" for the planet Earth.
Although the underlying ideas are much older, the term was coined in 1982 by Peter Russell in his book The Global Brain. How the Internet might be developed to achieve this was set out in 1986 "Information routeing groups – Towards the global superbrain: or how to find out what you need to know rather than what you think you need to know".[1] The first peer-reviewed article on the subject was written by Mayer-Kress and Barczys in 1995.
Francis Heylighen, who contributed much to the development of the concept, distinguished in [2] three different perspectives on the global brain, organicism, encyclopedism and emergentism, that developed relatively independently but that now appear to have come together into a single conception.
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In 1911, entomologist William Wheeler developed the concept of the ant colony as a spatially extended organism, and in the 1930's he coined the term superorganism to describe such an entity.[3]. In the 19th century, the sociologist Herbert Spencer saw society as a social organism and reflected about its need for a nervous system. The global brain as an organic process was perhaps first broadly elaborated by paleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In 1945, he described a coming "planetisation" of humanity, which he saw as the next phase of accelerating human "socialisation" (British spellings). Teilhard described both socialization and planetization as irreversible, irresistible processes of macrobiological development culminating in the emergence of a noosphere, or global mind (see Emergentism below)[4].
In 1993, Gregory Stock proposed a modern vision of superorganism formed by humans and machines, which he calls "Metaman". In this organic metaphor, the analogue of the nervous system is the global brain. The exchanges of information on Earth are processing at a high rate and speed, similar to the functioning of a nervous system.
In the perspective of encylopedism, the emphasis is on developing a universal knowledge network. The first attempt to create such an integrated system of the world's knowledge was the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert. However, by the end of the 19th century, the amount of knowledge had become too large to be published in a single synthetic volume. To tackle this problem, Paul Otlet founded the science of documentation, now called information science, eventually envisaging a World Wide Web-like interface that would make all the world's knowledge available immediately to anybody. H. G. Wells proposed the similar idea of a collaboratively developed world encyclopedia, which he called a World Brain. Nowadays this dream of a universal encyclopedia seems to become a reality with Wikipedia.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, too, was inspired by the free associative possibilities of the brain for his invention. The brain can link different kinds of information without any apparent link otherwise; Lee thought that computers could become much more powerful if they could imitate this functioning, i.e. make links between any arbitrary piece of information.[5]
This approach focuses on the emergent aspects of the evolution and development of complexity, including the spiritual, psychological, and moral-ethical aspects of the global brain. This is at present a particularly abstract and speculative domain. The global brain is here seen as a natural and emergent process of planetary evolutionary development. Here again Pierre Teilhard de Chardin attempted a synthesis of science, social values, and religion in his The Phenomenon of Man, which argues that the telos (drive, purpose) of universal evolutionary process is the development of greater levels of both complexity and consciousness. Teilhard proposed that if life persists then planetization, as a biological process producing a global brain, would necessarily also produce a global mind, a new level of planetary consciousness and a technologically-supported network of thoughts which he called the noosphere. Teilhard's proposed technological layer for the noosphere can be interpreted as an early anticipation of the Internet and the Web. [6]. Physicist and philosopher Peter Russell elaborates a similar view, and stresses the importance of personal spiritual growth, in order to build and to achieve synergy with the spiritual dimension of the emerging superorganism.
Systems theorists commonly describe the emergence of a higher order system in evolutionary development as a "metasystem transition" (a concept introduced by Valentin Turchin) or a "major evolutionary transition".[7]
The term "Global Brain" has also been applied recently in the management field to reflect the global innovation network that companies can tap into to enhance their innovation agenda. In this perspective, the term relates to the 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.).[8]
The global brain is a recurrent theme in many fictional works, particularly science fiction. Notable examples include the Borg from Star Trek and the Wired from Serial Experiments Lain, some aspects of the global brain are also explored in The Matrix films.