SCIENCE

The Global Brain. “The evolution of mass mind from the big bang to the 21st century. Howard Bloom Copyright 2000 Wiley and Sons Canada. 4.55 Billion to 1BC

The instant of creation marked the dawn of sociality. A neutron is a particle filled with need. It is unable to sustain itself for more than ten minutes. To survive it must find at best one mate and form a family. In the initial three minutes of existence protons paired off with neutrons, then rapidly attracted another couple to wed within their embrace, from a two proton, two neutron quartet of helium embrace. Those neurons which managed this match gained relative immortality.

Protons, on the other hand, managed to survive alone. But even they were endowed with inanimate longing. Flitting electrons were overwhelmed by an electrical charge they needed to share. Protons found these elemental sprites irresistible, and more marriages were made. From the mutual needs of electrons and protons came atoms.

A physical analogue of unrequited desire was stirred allurs ranging from the strong nuclear force of gravity There drew molecules into dust, dust into shards, and knitted together asteroids, stars, solar systems, galaxies…..Through the connective compulsion a terrible beauty was born.”

One of the products of this inorganic copulation was life. Gravity pulled the earth together 4.5 billion years ago…..Massive minuets of DNA generated the first primitive cell – the prokaryotes. At 3.5 billion years the first communal "brains were already making indelible marks upon the face of the early seas.” Those marks we called stromatolites. Page 14-15

For generations bacteria have been thought of as loan cells. Bacteria have been shown to be social to the ninth degree. Prokaryotes embark on a joint effort aimed at keeping their colony alive. The microbial brain began operations 91 trillion bacterial generations before the birth of the internet. Ancient bacteria, if they functioned like those today, had mastered the art of a world wide information exchange….That took over two billion years before a true brain of planetary scope would rise among the higher animals.

Eukaryote cells began as bacteria with a hospitable disposition. They took in fellow bacteria as boarders and put them to work in their innards as permanent residents. Networks stretch and alter and achieve new capabilities.

When memory appeared, the effect was dramatic. A multi-celled creature could quickly store experience in a nervous system circuitry. This opened the way for a swift ‘re-programmer’ zoologist a Dawkins calls “The Meme” which easily slips from brain to brain….Memes could carry their messages via the brain to brain…..Memes could carry their messages via the swift intangibles of scent, light and sound. The result would trigger a knowledge explosion and the evolution of data webs with a whole new style.

The key to this revolution lies in the early rise of memories’ child – learning – the medium in which the memes thrives. Page 30
Learning would cable information externally. Now it could not work twenty million or more multicellular creatures into a super-organism of impressive size: one endowed with twenty million brains, trillions of sent receptors, forty million ears and forty million eyes. Many examples follow.

Congratulations, you have just uncovered one synapse of the social brain, imitative learning – the primordial meme. No cellular material was exchanged. Only photons connected the two creatures. Yet what one creature had learned by effort turned up in the brain of the other, neat, complete and ready to go. Page 51.

Richard Dawkins, when trying to explain the nature of the Meme, gives the example of a melody which infects one mind after another until its presence is outrageous. Once a group of animals, no matter how primitive, possess imitative learning, it’s in a position to regain an old networking knack which multicellular creatures had for some time lacked. Like bacteria, creatures watching for each other’s lead can pool their information to arrive at mass decisions far beyond a single mind’s capabilities”

Information pooled like the mass of bees. Ants use their networking mind for yet another purpose – warfare….And now with learning and new kinds of information exchange, multicellar animals have begun to rise towards a new form of global brain.

The next chapter moves into birds. Mistakes. Evolutionary progress is not the result of successful accumulation of mistakes but it is rather the outcome of designed creative process. Some very interesting cases of the mems in birds follows. Page 45

Mammals and the Further rise of Mind.

Memes – habits, new ways of doing things, and other commanding intangibles which migrate from mind to mind are the key to the next jump up in networking. Memes come in two stripes: implicit, those which belong to the animal brain - and explicit – those which depend on human neural add ons, the cranial gizmos responsible for syntactic speech. Implicit memes – the ones transferred by lobsters, birds, octopi and squid – are housed in a very old part of the brain. Yet they dominate our lives, handling everything from our autopilot greetings to quarrels, reconciliation, unspoken culture quirks, frustrations and joys to the way we drive. Page 49.

Threading a New Tapestry. 65 million BC – 30,000 BC

Evidence in many examples are given of the collective humminoid mind that was going global. Over four hundred thousand years ago, fire was popular from Africa to China. By thirty thousand years ago, our brains allowed us humans to create achievements far beyond the animal Ken.
A two million old skull indicates that homo habilis possessed a patch of brain unknown till then ….This new cerebral curio was Broncos area. …an apparatus vital to speech. Page 61

When Richard Dawkins first published his idea of the Meme he made it clear he was speaking of imitation. Memes come in two sorts – behavioural and verbal…..

The result is the behavioural meme – a skill or strong inkling well beyond the realm of human thought and the rise of the verbal memes. Page 63

The chapter ‘A Trip through Perception Factory’ leads to a chapter on Shared hallucinations. A new form of global intelligence which would soon emerge among human beings. Page 71

Individual perception untainted by others influence does not exist e.g. Tasmanian natives starved to death each time famine struck, despite the fact the island home was surrounded by fish and rich seas. The problem was their culture did not define fish as food.
The perceptual influence of the mob of those who have gone before us and those who stand around us now is mind boggling.
The book is 200 pages of a bold re-write of the evolutionary saga. Plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a world-wide learning machine. It describes the net work of life on earth as a global brain in which we all play a role. The world wide web is just the latest step in the development of the brain. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains.

The aim of the book is intended as a dream toward peace. ‘The horizons which we soar are within us.”….We have a mission to create, for we are evolution incarnate. We are her self-awareness, her frontal lobes and fingertips…..We are the second generation star stuff come alive. We are part of something 3.5 billion years old, yet pubertal in cosmic time. We are neurons of this planets interspecies mind. We need to pursue this dream of peace for a few more centuries. We can each contribute one small step in this long march of history, we can finally achieve what the will within us will bequeath – a peaceful destiny. Page 22.