The Internet as "Noosphere"

When I first started learning HTML in 1999, we were taught that the Internet was a network of networks, mostly amalgamated from a complex combination of hardware that came in the form of servers, storage disks, communication cables and protocols. World Wide Web was more like “world wide wait” that tested one’s patience for agonizing hours at crowded cyber-cafes waiting for an eternity for the browser to load the page that contained the next piece of heart stopping information coming from the other side of the globe.

I remember being so excited at my first Hotmail account that I created in a trendy parlor that was the first one in my city. Utopia at last, supported by a digital revolution. This is STILL the trend that is catching on in non-descript towns like the one where a cousin of mine runs a cyber-cafe. Of course, the kind of stuff they like to see inside their “cabins” is another story!

In just a little more than a decade, the world has become wired. Perhaps we were not ready. Perhaps the inter-connected ness is still a surprise to many. My mom does not read English and hasn’t YET seen an Internet page, but when I first had a computer, she was savvy enough to ask if my sisters had sent an e-mail! These days, I am trying to ask my cousin to get a webcam so she can see my face and deal better with her anxiety of my welfare.

It was just recently, and now that information on a screen is more or less granted that one can try connecting the dots and see the development of Internet as an evolutionary phenomenon. Something that never ceases to amaze me as I discover more and more innovative that seems to give expression to the hunger of unity in the species, lending credence to the perspective from quantum physics’ idea that the world is actually a gigantic thought. Yes, but in whose mind?

Google to the rescue! Here is an excerpt from matrixmasters.com :

“In 1938, a Jesuit priest wrote a book in which he postulated the existence of "a sphere of thought" enveloping the Earth. This book, The Phenomenon of Man, wasn't published until the late 1950s, after its author, Teilhard de Chardin, had died. In it, he called this enveloping sphere of thought the noosphere and described it as "a living tissue of consciousness" enclosing the Earth and growing ever more dense.”

“Teilhard believed that because of the spherical shape of the Earth, ideas will eventually encounter other ideas resulting in a cultural convergence of thought. This, he believed, would eventually lead to a single, self-developing framework of pure mind. Teilhard used the term "noosphere" (possibly first coined by Vladimir Vernadsky to represent a sphere of mind encircling the Earth. As he saw it, the noosphere encased what we call the biosphere, or sphere of life.”

And a similar point of view from Ruth Ginger Snapper’s Language of the Noosphere (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/com/snap1.html)

“Is the web merely a form of entertainment to be used as an escape from the reality of everyday life or can it become the means by which we change society and everyday reality? Is there some way that this endless need to escape into the dark realm can have a positive spin on it so that people can be free from their demons and be able to evolve a sense of higher consciousness that Teilhard de Chardin was envisioning? With so many issues in the world to confront, and so many people, plants and animals in need of help, is society best served by people spending hours fighting imaginary battles when the real battles continue to remain unfought? Is this the best the noosphere can aspire to?”

“Looking at the internet as a living organism, such as a rose, an analogy can be made towards the fulfillment of the noosphere as envisioned by Teilhard de Chardin. Surely the development of the noosphere must need input and nourishment in order to grow and propagate. But will sunlight (servers) be enough? Will water (e-commerce) enable new growth to take place? Will an aspirin in the water (government regulation) be enough to stem the tide of moral decay and cyberterrorism?”

“Connection between the soil and the rose is key for development of the rose and a key factor in the fulfillment of the noosphere. Stretching this connection a bit further, perhaps much of the content of today¹s internet, brimming with chat, pornography, e-commerce and MUDs, provides the noosphere with important nourishment in the form of fertilizer. All of this content, varied and unstructured, possibly meaningless to many, will eventually be used in the global collective brain as nutrient food for fostering ideas and allowing further development of the internet and global evolution of it in the future. Ideas have always been the powerhouse of humankind, what separates man from the animals. Free thinking and exchange of ideas enables the processing of those ideas to continue and the internet is a perfect compost heap for this to take place. No other medium has thus far been able to contain so many varieties of human endeavor contained within the same structure. From literature to art and music, to science and sociology, all are contained within the realm of cyberspace.”

Only time will tell, but if this were to be true then Project ONEderland will someday figure in the list returned by some search engine gizmo and profile the way a digital media wisecrack took a potshot at re-defining the human belief system. But by then, we would probably have discovered many other ways of transcending time and space.