دانلود رایگان مقاله قدرت و سیاست: تهدیدی برای مغز جهانی

abstract

This paper seeks to reaffirm human kind's status as a superorganism, or what the paper will later call a social organism that operates as a biological individual. As such, the paper recognizes the existence of the Global Brain and its great potential to help organize our social organism into a more coordinated, more efficient, more democratic, and more collectively potent entity. This potential lies in its ability to foster more numerous and more diverse communications between both humans and technology, and then better link those communications to mechanisms of action. However the Global Brain remains just that: a potential. Power dynamics around the world continue to yield very much influence to a very small percentage of the population. Not only does this reality cause poor collective decisions to be made which is dangerous in its own right, but it also threatens the possible emergence of a true Global Brain that effectively coordinates a global society. It's the goal of this paper to highlight that danger we are facing and suggest a course of action that intentionally applies the Global Brain concept to reform the way our communities share information and make decisions in order to realize its dream.

2. Conclusion

There are two main themes discussed in this paper. The first is that, via cultural evolution, humanity has continued to coalesce into a larger and larger superorganism. This complex entity that represents a higher level of biological organization, and it is developing more rapidly than ever with globalization and the emergence of the internet. Communication between humans has built our biotechnological superorganism, and communication pathways are malleable. There is a degree to which these patterns are self-organizing, and there is a degree to which they are actively shaped by people. The production and distribution of media and the design of socio-political organizations are two examples of ways in which communication flows can be intentionally manipulated in order to produce desired results. The second lesson was that the malleability of cultural pathways is always a politically contested process, a fact that the formation and emergence of the Global Brain cannot escape. The organic powers of self-organization are counteracted by manipulative forces that seek to stunt diversity of thought and limit access to decision-making apparati. There will have to be significant coordinated socio-political action upon our cultural flows that can combat any segments of society that have the ability to derail the blossoming of a healthy, sustainable superorganism.