When I wrote The Global Brain, forty years ago, we were in the very early stages of computer networking. These early networks soon became the Internet, and later the Worldwide Web. From that came a whole plethora of innovations: streaming video, online shopping, news and banking, social media, the cloud, and more; not to mention the […]
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My First Computer
I built my first computer when I was sixteen, in my dad’s garage — and literally out of bits of wire. As a budding mathematician in the early 1960s I was fascinated with the new field of computing and the basic processes behind their operation. Deep down most of what a computer does is add […]
Continue readingGet Real Ray
A Critique of Ray Kurzweil’s Predictions Ray Kurzweil recently announced his year-by-year predictions of the future. Here are just a few samples (full list here): 2020 – Personal computers reach a computing power comparable to the human brain. 2025 – The emergence of mass-market human implants. 2031 – 3D printed human organs used in hospitals […]
Continue readingBig Boat, Big Brother
I recently took a cruise, the first one in my life. It’s never been something I particularly aspired to, but I was invited to give the keynote at a conference being held on a cruise, so found myself with the opportunity to experience this aspect of our culture. It turned out to be the largest […]
Continue readingDoes Our Brain Really Create Consciusness?
[Originally published as a Huffington Post blog – 06/ 9/11] Western science has had remarkable success in explaining the functioning of the material world, but when it comes to the inner world of the mind, it has very little to say. And when it comes to consciousness itself, science falls curiously silent. There is nothing […]
Continue readingGaian Perspective on Gulf Oil Leak
The Global Brain is Watching. (This is text from video. Watch the video.) The live video feed from the fractured oil pipe a mile beneath the surface is allowing anyone with Internet access (currently more than 1.7 billion of us) to watch the plume of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. And, moreover, to […]
Continue readingThe Death of the Mouse
The mouse that sits in our hand so much of the day is on the way out. It has served its time well. But the future is mouse-free. Thanks to the iPad. Apple launched the mouse nearly thirty years ago as a way of pointing to places on a computer screen. It freed us from […]
Continue readingGreenhouse Cost of Beef
Offset your driving by becoming a vegetarian! A study by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, showed that producing a kilogram of beef leads to the emission of greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 36.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide. That is about the same as driving the average […]
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