The Internet Hive Mind

Mhm, I see. If I understand right, I am not welcome in this discussion.
But still, the reason why I started from topic energy and "2012" is that this topic came out from the one about energy and it really seemed that in first topic were talks about somekind of feelings based on energies. Which, in my opinion can come from wish in human to explain his exsistence.
In your first post were words "This is sparked by Indigo's "Energy" thread. These are thoughts that I had while reading that thread; thoughts that were touched upon by one poster. Many of us sense changes coming, although not the how or why exactly. One theory I would like to propose is that the internet is actually allowing humans to function, on a very primative scale, as a hive mind."
I took these words directly, as a continue of that thread, because your words, looking through my senses, are touched by wish to explain that collective feeling.
I just wanted to share my opinion.
Thank you for your attention, and expensive time.

I think we have a small misunderstanding of language going on here. You are certainly welcome to post on this thread. I took the way you used some of your words incorrectly I believe. I have to constantly remind myself that there are posters who are not as fluient in English as some of us. Unfortionately, a small misplaced word or highlighted word or phrase, can change meaning and perception very quickly.

Please continue to post. I am still interested in the "Internet as a Hive Mind" theory though. That is the direction I would like to go here.
 
A human brain is more complex than any hive mind. But 1 out 4 humans on the planet is connected to the Internet, and it looks like this:
600px-Internet_map_1024.jpg


However, this is still less than 1/10th of a single human brain, and at least 40 times less densely connected.


Meanwhile, people are autonomous reactive neuro-systems. Internet unifies certain terminology and standards of communication which makes people all around the world more easily compatible; not the same.

We will fix that when we start putting microchips into people's brains.
 
We will fix that when we start putting microchips into people's brains.
That's the stupidest conspiratory/government idea in existence.

There are much more reasonable ways for people to learn to co-exist peacefully. Unfortunately, powerful people in the world become usually the most antisocial ones, who enforce their primitive ways on others. But don't worry, even if this happens, it won't last.
 
That's the stupidest conspiratory/government idea in existence.

There are much more reasonable ways for people to learn to co-exist peacefully. Unfortunately, powerful people in the world become usually the most antisocial ones, who enforce their primitive ways on others. But don't worry, even if this happens, it won't last.

Singularity? Cyborgs? ........ Bioengineering? It isn't a conspiracy and has nothing to do with the government. It is all up to the market.

I think it will last. Humans don't know how to co-exist peacefully without being coerced in a primitive fashion to conform.
 
A human brain is more complex than any hive mind. But 1 out 4 humans on the planet is connected to the Internet, and it looks like this:
600px-Internet_map_1024.jpg

Wow, and to think most of that is porn!
 
Singularity? Cyborgs? ........ Bioengineering? It isn't a conspiracy and has nothing to do with the government. It is all up to the market.

I think it will last. Humans don't know how to co-exist peacefully without being coerced in a primitive fashion to conform.
Singularity has nothing to do with Homo Sapiens, if humans are smart enough to stop competing with machines, based on ego. The geocentric model of the solar system failed; it was based on the assumption that it all circles around a human. When people first tried to fly they attached wings to themselves, but later learned to use machines rationally. Yes, A.I. will surpass humans, big deal. Doesn't mean we have to make ridiculous attempts to merge with it, or chase it.

Humans know how to co-exist peacefully, but not nearly enough people have studied the results in such social sciences. But it's possible. There's no need for idiotic micro-chips. If any such thing is done, it will be solely based on ignorance. And won't last, because people who know better ways will rebel successfully.
 
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What changes?

That's one of the questions we are really trying to answer. I am proposing that we may be more in touch with each other (and the world as a whole) because of the 'net. That it is acting as a kind of primative hive mind allowing us to do things as a group, and raise all our empathy, to accomplish things that were not possible before.

Our community is a great example of a community that would not have existed pre-internet. It's such a specialized interest (MBTI) that forming a larger, purposeful group in a small area (say a Medium-sized city like Lansing where I live) would just not have been plausible. Look how spread out we are even here. Who knows what groups like this are affecting.
 
Again this may be a terminology issue, but my experiences with the "hive mind" might indicate that is is not really all that smart. I mean, there are intelligent people in the mix, but as a collective I have not been overly impressed, not at all. I don't say this to insult (and this has little do do with this forum) but only as an observation on the relative value of the "hive" relationship. If there is something of value one can extract, great, but for the most part it seems to be just a great deal of noise.
 
Again this may be a terminology issue, but my experiences with the "hive mind" might indicate that is is not really all that smart. I mean, there are intelligent people in the mix, but as a collective I have not been overly impressed, not at all. I don't say this to insult (and this has little do do with this forum) but only as an observation on the relative value of the "hive" relationship. If there is something of value one can extract, great, but for the most part it seems to be just a great deal of noise.

Yes, perhaps "Hive Mind" is an inappropriate term for what I am talking about. I would seriously not want humans to be a bunch of insect-like beings with no individuality. I will search for a better term, but nothing comes to mind right now. What I am really meaning is more of a joining of purpose, with strong empathic ties. Not a singlar collective where the individual is lost in the whole.
 
There is individuality in the idea of the hive mind. It's just that the individuals work as a group to accomplish the goals of the collective. "Resistance is futile." j/k
 
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There is individuality in the idea of the hive mind. It's just that the individuals work a group to accomplish the goals of the collective. "Resistance is futile." j/k


LOL, yes my Star Trek terminology is coming out here! I need to invent new words.
 
All very interesting. I guess I have noticed that the "hive mind" as it has come to be understood via the internet can to be tragically cut off from the "hive mind" of past human experience....what one might call that a "tribal mind." Technological advances have evolved so quickly that I fear we see ourselves having little in common with the thinking and experience of ages past. From my perspective, we have different toys, and different sets of blindspots, but we ourselves have changed very little. We (as a culture) can seem like teenagers who look fully grown-up, but are not quite yet, disregarding the wisdom of the elders as irrelevant, meaningless, archaic. One day we may consider things differently. So in this sense the "hive mind" can be a dangerous precipice without some perspective.

So that is one viewpoint....I do think when it comes to sharing our collective awareness one does tend to give additional weight to voices that might be otherwise forgotten, lost, or drowned out. This is a good thing. However, to make sense of this "idea soup" we often are lacking the more credible voices to pull the frayed edges together. These are usually not part of the discussion and we risk being left to our own limited devices to flail about in frustration. This is partly why I think the things we glean from the "hive mind", while potentially useful, require some filtering, discernment, refinement, study, and weighing for personal value. Otherwise the soup just swirls about us as noise, coming to nothing. Personally, I would advocate not letting heightened awareness be an end in itself, but simply a tool to engage our inner life and the decisions through which we live. My theory would be that this process in itself is what brings cus larity....not simply more and more input. It is a movement from awareness to life, life to awareness....a back and forth exchange.

Another 2 cents from me....hey, I may be up to 6 cents here!!! :)

ps...nothing against teenagers, y'all are great!!
 
To expand on what I wrote in the other thread, this is my personal take on things.

200 years ago if you wanted to learn from someone that wasn't within your immediate sphere (that is, someone you couldn't just go and see easily and quickly, say within the space of one day for no or virtually no cost) you either had to send them a letter, read their book (assuming they had one) or read it in the paper.

At the time, mail was a process which - depending on how far away the people involved lived from each other - could take anywhere from days, to months, and possibly even years to execute what you might call a "wave of transaction" (a request for information followed by a response).

Additionally, public libraries as we understand them today simply didn't exist, limiting the number of people who could access the information within books. On top of that books were few and far between, so even the best stocked library would only contain a tiny fraction of the total number of books in existence at the time.

And newspapers were only available in relatively very few areas, there weren't very many of them, and the only information they contained was what the editor had decided to put in there. The reader had no immediate choice in the matter (though there were various ways to influence things in the longer run, if you had enough influence).

By about 100 years ago technology had allowed us to improve the speed of the mail, and also added telephones, telegraphs and radio to the mix, reducing the possible time of transmission for a "wave" to seconds, or at most, days or weeks. This hugely increased the speed and frequency of the transmission of information, more was being communicated faster.

But even these developments had their limitations, mostly a case that even radio could, at any one time. only transmit a relatively small amount of the information that existed at that time, and in the same way as newspapers what was transmitted was determined by the editor, not the listener.

Additionally the creation of public libraries in the form we know and love today made it possible for a much greater number of people to access the information contained within books, and cheaper and more efficient printing processes, plus a higher level of education amongst a greater number of people, made books far more common than they'd been before, though the problem of libraries only being able to hold a fraction of all those books in existence remained, and the smaller the library the smaller the number of books.

By about 50 years ago we'd improved the number of places connected to telephones and radio (increasing access to and the total amount of the knowledge available at the time through those methods) and we'd also added TV to the mix, making the transmission of live images possible for the first time. Again the speed of a wave and the amount of information that wave contained increased, and public libraries were more common too, but still they could only transmit a relatively tiny amount of the information available.

The invention of the internet has made it possible for (currently) approximately 25% of the human race to access the collected knowledge and opinions of not just the rest of that (currently) approximately 25%, but also the recorded collected knowledge and opinions of humanity stretching back arguably to the dawn of our species, and it's all accessible in virtually an instant.

The limitations of the earlier transmission methods have become almost irrelevant. If it exists and if it's been put on the internet, it can be accessed by roughly 25% of humanity in an instant, and that percentage is only going to increase.

We are able to communicate with each other, as a species, like never before. Ideas that people would not even have heard of before are now available instantly, all at the touch of a button.

This means that the overall acquired knowledge of the human race is increasing almost exponentially. As a species we have access to more information to make decisions with than ever before, and the more informed someone is the more likely they are to make better decisions ("better" remaining a relative term, if you're of the opinion that the human race in general are about as intelligent as a particularly retarded hamster, then perhaps "more likely to make fewer stupid decisions" might be more accurate).

In short, the internet has made the human race more knowledgeable and therefore arguably smarter than at any other moment in its history, and that's only set to increase as more is added to the internet by those already on there and more new information is added by new people going on-line.

Also, the faster and more easily information is shared, the faster and more easily new knowledge is created and discovered.

The human race then is not just set to get smarter because they share more about what they already know, it's set to get smarter by building on that information with new knowledge that's being created faster than ever before too.

Perhaps it's an exaggeration to say that we are at the dawn of a new epoch of mankind, but then again perhaps it's not. :D

I have to stress that this is for humanity as a whole. There are plenty of examples of individuals using the internet in ways that make them dumber than ever before too, but I like to think they are vastly outweighed by the rest of us (assuming, of course, that I'm not one of the increasingly dumber group. :D).

EDIT: How all this relates to the OP is that I think well informed people making better decisions are likely to come to the same sorts of conclusions about certain things more often than people who aren't so well informed, so it can perhaps seem that through the information sharing power of the internet we are all beginning to "think as one" a little bit more than we used to.
 
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I was just thinking this the other day when you made the thread
(and then I lost the link to the thread and could not post)

Anyhow

It seems we are all thinking in sync lately or perhaps you all this, usually
and I am just starting to connect with all of you

I have been having thoughts and they are all becoming threads in this forum
Can be anything light hearted or deeper
I was actually suspicious that someone(s) was reading my mind. I know someone who has done that by accident a few times. If I am right that someone has, please let me know! :smile:


Just something I noticed.
 
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