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Future Shocks

The Singularity of the Human Hive Mind

James Sirois gives us a strong warning about overusing the net.

The internet has become so all-pervading that even the word seems a little old-fashioned now. No-one really uses it much anymore. We ask each other for wifi, or talk of going online, or complain about a lack of data, but rarely do we talk of ‘the internet’ as an entity; it has become too ubiquitous, too intrinsic to our lives, for that to be a very useful term. This prompts me to wonder: what are we becoming? Could the internet lead us to become more than individuals and disparate communities?

I believe we’re entering an era when the words ‘individual’ and ‘community’ take on new definitions or meanings as we increasingly become interconnected in what I think of as a ‘hive mind’. I also believe that a hive-minded process could itself be a transition towards a singularity in consciousness across the Earth.

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