The Global Brain
The ideas of Chardin, presented in the last chapter, are further developed in the work of the writer Peter Russell. In his 1983 book The Global Brain, Russell puts forward the idea that the true purpose of humanity is to evolve into a massively networked global brain for our planet. In Russell's theory, each individual would perform a function similar to an individual cell in the brain.
By learning to think in this networked way, the global brain would represent a mind of its own with unfathomably large computational power. Humanity would then be able to act in a coordinated and harmonious manner and avoid conflict, greed, and exploitation. Russell's timeline for the emergence of the global brain coincides with 2012, which he views as a white hole in time, his version of Chardin's omega point.
A Critical Mass
In support of this idea, Russell cites the fact that it takes approximately ten to the power of ten (or ten billion) atoms to form the most basic level of unicellular bacterial life. This number seems to him to be a necessary minimum for the sufficient complexity for the evolution of life. In a parallel to the evolution of life from matter, Russell suggests that a similar number of brain cells (in the region of ten billion) in the neocortex are required to produce the reflective consciousness characteristic of humanity. If this turns out to be a general principle of evolution, Russell suggests that the next evolution could be represented by something in the region of ten billion minds beginning to work together as one global brain.
The Information Age
Russell formulated these ideas in the early 1980s, and correctly predicted the importance of emerging computer networks in an information revolution. Russell noted that by 1900, more people were employed by industry than the previously dominant activity of agriculture. By the mid 1970s, the number of people engaged in the processing of information (in all of its aspects, from publishing to banking to media to all computer-related occupations) had caught up with those engaged in industry — the processing of energy and matter.
“From that time on,” Russell declares, “information processing has been our dominant activity.” We had entered the Information Age. The Industrial Revolution took 300 years. The Information Age has been in ascendancy for thirty. Russell predicts that this fits into a pattern of ever-accelerating evolution that stretches back to the dawn of life on Earth:
The first simple life forms evolved 4 billion years ago.
Multicellular life appeared about 1 billion years ago.
Vertebrates with central nervous systems developed several hundred million years ago.
Mammals appeared tens of millions of years ago.
The first hominids appeared a couple million years ago.
Homo sapiens appeared a few hundred thousand years ago.
Language and tool use developed tens of thousands of years ago.
Civilization, the movement into towns and cities, occurred a few thousand years ago.
The Industrial Revolution began three centuries ago.
The Information Revolution is a few decades old.
Similar to the theories of Calleman and McKenna, Russell believes that cultural acceleration is leading toward a culmination at some time in the very near future. Although he is not attached to any specific prediction for what will or won't happen on December 21, 2012, he does embrace the general principle of a major evolutionary breakthrough for humanity somewhere around that time.
The Dawning of the Wisdom Age
Although for Russell technology is the means by which we have reached our current state of evolution, it is only a means to an end and not an end in itself. Our current computer technology has created the ability to communicate and transfer more information than ever before. In Russell's model, this creates the opportunity for cultures from around the world to share insights about enlightenment and different wisdom traditions. Teachings that otherwise would only have been available to a tiny minority are now effectively available to everyone.
For Russell, the key requirement to making the leap into the Wisdom Age is the ability to dissolve attachment to what the philosopher and writer Alan Watts called the skin-encapsulated ego. This is the idea that the boundary of self starts and ends with the physical body and that the individual is a detached and separate entity from the world. This is replaced with what Russell has called leaky margins, where boundaries are still there but are not solid. In this way, it is possible to function in the world, but also to identify with it and all the other people in it enough to be empathic — and hence, wise.
According to Russell, the exponential growth of the Wisdom Age will be so rapid that it will outstrip the growth of the Information Age in the very near future. “Because each new phase of evolving intelligence takes place in a fraction of the time of the previous phase, we can expect the dawning of a Wisdom Age to take place in years rather than decades. It will be standing on the shoulders of the Information Age.”
