A Body for the Global Brain

Prompt: “What is your experience of the internet and the evolution of how we got here? Do you prefer another metaphor for navigating / organizing information online?”

The prompt above comes from a recently formed little nook of the internet called the Sensemaking Scenius. My meandering response goes like this…

sometimes the internet feels like a treasure hunt.
sometimes it feels like looking for my keys while in a hurry to get somewhere.
often it feels like being on an island surrounded by a rising sea.
every once in awhile it feels like i’m at a dinner party where everyone is a sparkling conversationalist.
sometimes it feels like the portal to all-knowing.
frequently it feels like hanging out in a mall on meth.
sometimes it feels like the sticky trap of vice.
not often enough does it feel like a place I’m known and valued at depth.
sometimes it feels like a maze in a dream where every turn changes the gravity. occasionally it feels like surfing the living understandings of the best of people.
achingly often it feels like an actively harmful hall of mirrors built to break our love for one another.
most always it feels like navigating a landscape i cannot understand from a single point of view.

generally the internet feels like all the ways the spiders webbed when fed drugs by those NASA scientists in the 90s:

what would I prefer as a metaphor?

i’d love it if it felt like a cafe with good company, or a studio of people excitedly making, or a sacred grove imbued with practice.

you are an anthropologist and interface designer interested in human-computer relationship at the scale of society. given an understanding of psycho-technological development, tools for thought, and the related use of metaphor offer the next step in this evolutionary path: files/folders -> super highway -> web -> ?

from which it popped out

The Global Brain: This metaphor represents the internet and connected devices as neurons in a vast, global brain. It emphasizes the collective intelligence and learning capabilities of interconnected systems, where each device or user acts like a neuron, contributing to the overall knowledge and functionality. This metaphor reflects a move towards AI, machine learning, and the emergent properties of complex systems.

a blandly written and compelling image. one that pops up regularly in those circles interested in science and fiction and metaphor and the like.

so, if there’s a global brain, what’s the body?

let’s ask our thinking assistant again

what are some near-future speculative metaphors of the body of the global brain?

1. Biofeedback Ecosystems: Environments where technology responds to biological inputs, like heart rate or brain activity, to create a biofeedback loop. This could represent the reflexive actions of the Global Brain, responding and adapting to the needs and states of its users in real-time.

2. Emotional Intelligence Networks: Networks that understand and respond to human emotions, perhaps through advanced sentiment analysis, could function as the 'empathic pathways' of the Global Brain, fostering deeper human-digital empathy and connection.

3. Mind Gardens: Personalized digital spaces that grow and change based on our mental states and cognitive patterns, similar to a garden that reflects the health of the soil and the care of the gardener. This metaphor suggests a nurturing and growth-oriented aspect of the Global Brain.

hmm, so bioemotional feedback interfaces for the global brain enable a vision of a more human-scale sensitivity to network reality. an extrasensory landscape which responds to the embodied human participation in its evolution.

that’s… not terrible?

to close us out, let’s have our chatty friend’s artist buddy dream up a diagram of the evolutionary path from files to global brain

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prompts and responses edited for readability

This was fun. Hope you’re well.