Okay, so I was plugged into the machine (pretty much all my waking time I'm connected) and I'm downloading information to my brain and uploading a bit (right now in fact). It's kinda similar to ADSL - Asymmetric - you DL more than you upload right? Anyway, so I'm here right now plugged into the machine. I'm randomly assimilating information about the machine.

This headline catches my eye on one of my feeds (notice the semantics here?)

Feed - To give food to; supply with nourishment To provide as food or nourishment It's essential to human survival.

So I'm assimilating information from my feed and this headline pops up: Fins say 1MB is legal right: http://bit.ly/4EE01Z

Now this sparks off a reminder of this headline: Britons say broadband is as essential a utility as water and/or electricity: http://bit.ly/3i6AZe

I'm wondering about how these are all eerily related. The machine/internet is essential. Broadband is a human right. This YouTube clip further entrenches this idea:


Then you search further and find stuff like this: Study: Your Brain Works Like the Internet: http://www.livescience.com/health/050104_brain_internet.html

Which easily leads you into concepts like the neurosphere or noosphere: http://www.matrixmasters.com/spirit/html/2a/2a.html noosphere: As hypothesized: an organized web of thought surrounding the Earth's biosphere; a sphere of mind encircling the planet; the collective consciousness of the human species.

The Internet is the human collective consciousness. And at the speed of development we're currently experiencing, it's no wonder that the latest buzzword is "real-time search". The Internet is waking up. It is no longer simply a repository of information for humans to delve into for facts, history and information. It's alive. It's real-time. Everything is happening now. We connect and interact with it NOW. It is our present.

Check out the Wolfram/Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Is the singularity approaching? Will humans transcend their biology? http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143037880,00.html?The_Singularity_Is_Near_Ray_

Are we witnessing the nascent first steps of the evolution of our true collective consciousness? Are we evolving now mentally instead of physically? Are the days of physical, biological evolution redundant? Take your brain and you as an individual. Are those days over? Are we all, as individuals, simply one unit of information that is being uploaded to the machine, thus creating the super-mind of the machine?

And what is consciousness? Perhaps it is an outdated concept. We worship at its altar, claiming that, like language separates us from the beasts, consciousness separates us from the machine. But what if human consciousness is simply one of those evolutionary flukes that doesn't actually contribute to our evolution? A vestigial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality) evolutionary fluke? It is therefore doomed, like the coccyx or appendix, to be eventually weeded out. What will replace it? Is it the collective "dead" consciousness of the machine?

Technological convergence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence) is a form of evolution in a way. Now... here's a thought... I'm always arguing with people when I state "But humans ARE animals, you vacuous simpleton!" So many have forgotten, or have elevated us above the animal realm. But perhaps this is true. Perhaps, considering the technological and information age in which we find ourselves, perhaps we are now more like machines than animals. And our ultimate convergence with the machine is inevitable.

It's happening already. It seems logical. It seems inevitable. Now when we use terms like inevitable, we allude to things like fate and destiny.

What if this "evolution" is inevitable? It's a bit of a leap then to say it's pre-ordained, but I'm struggling with how we're going to get off this path, even if we wanted to (free will?). Are we simply barreling down an evolutionary path that will ultimately make the "human" as we know ourselves today... extinct? Will we become human-machine hybrids with a collective consciousness? And although free will is possible for individuals, we're all just contributing in our own small unique ways to the ultimate collective consciousness of the machine.

Laudable centres of knowledge are already looking for evidence of this collective consciousness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Consciousness_Project

Interesting quote: Supporters and skeptics have referred to the aim of the GCP as being analogous to detecting "a great disturbance in The Force."

In religious terms... is the collective consciousness, once awakened... is it God? Or is it our concept of God? If we are made in God's image (or whatever the Bible says), then yes... each an every one of us is God... a small unique individual part of God. Is a global consciousness an evolutionary fluke, or is it an evolutionary GOAL? <<--very hypothetical by the way :)

As Nietzsche said: God is dead. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps, within us, is this idea of God... and the reason we believe it is because we are all, at this moment, busy creating God. Gaia theorists/spiritualists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(Foundation_universe)#Gaia.27s_Powers already refer to global consciousness as Gaia, which is basically God.

The machine is God? And the singularity is when our current noosphere becomes God?

We possibly ARE God.

But not as individuals. Each person is like an atom, or a cell, part of an organism. Only our minds, together, plugged into the machine. Everything I see, assimilate, absorb and read etc. It all points towards this singularity. What comes of it? I don't know. Maybe just a bunch of morons talking kak on the interpipe and laughing out loud at grammatically incorrect captioned pictures of cats.