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Dissertation Global Brain Bloom (changes)

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Notes on Global Brain by Harold Howard Bloom

Concerned with showing the networked origins and aspects of evolutionary life on Earth. Mostly, the book takes the form of a repeated proof by example (lots of examples), as many of the pop-sci works that make up the transhuman canon follow.
Overall, this book flips the script on the Sokel Hoax: by attempting to foreground a theory of history and philosophy, Bloom appears ignorant of the sophisticated machinery built by philosophy and theorists of history.

Characterizes the vision of WWW as global brain by stating that it will be “a post-World Wide Web computer net that will learn our ways of thought and fetch us the knowledge we need before we know we want it” (1).
“But a worldwide neocortex—complete with whales—is not a gift of the silicon age. It is a phase in the ongoing evolution of a networked global brain which has existed for more than 3 billion years. This planetary mind is neither uniquely human nor a product of technology. Nor is it a result of reincarnation, or an outgrowth of telepathy. It is a product of evolution and biology. Nature has been far more clever at connectionism than he we. Her mechanisms for information swapping, data processing, and collective creation are more intricate and agile than anything the finest computer theoreticians have yet foreseen” (1).
Argues that bacterial networks of communication are sophisticated and global, and have been for millenia.
Theories of evolution that center around individual selection (think Richard Dawkins and The Selfish Gene) deny the role of collective intelligence in evolution. Bloom wishes to foreground (or return to the foreground) the theory of group selection.

A good pop-history of Pythagoras (good sources) who claims that Pythagorean thought marks the first emergence of the possibility of a global subculture (which are important to Bloom).
Despite Bloom’s insistence on global evolution and many non-Cartesian things, he still talks about “those who would later conquer the outer world by withdrawing from it: scientists” (162).
Not really sure what psycho-bio-circuitry is, but the chapter does make a lot of the division between introverts and extroverts.

This chapter (which bashes many fundamentalist movements and also suggests that Southerners are biologically inferior to Northerners again shows the difficulties in thinking evolutionarily).

This chapter continues in the Cartesian, mechanized view of the world. By starting with examples of symbiosis in nature, Bloom shifts to talks of instrumentalizing animal life.

Revised on November 4, 2008 13:24:06 by Escha Ton (71.58.78.59)