II. A Learning Planet: An Integral Knowledge by Humankind

C. Mindkind: A Global Knowledge

Cascio, Jamais. Get Smarter. Atlantic Monthly. July/August, 2009. A San Francisco futurist advises we ought to do what evolution has always done to meet challenges: increase our relative intelligence. Which is then seen as much underway from memory and concentration enhancing drugs to the singularity of regnant, brain-like machines. A “Noocene” era, from Teilhard’s Noosphere and a human Anthropocene, is proposed that could gain its own collective sentience. But still sans an abiding philosophy or reason, we hurtle forward with no idea where, how or why. And Pierre Teilhard, it ought be recalled, did not endorse a global homogeny as much as a principle of “creative union” at each evolutionary stage whereby increased community actually will enhance individual freedom.

Cheung, William and Jiming Liu. On Knowledge Grid and Grid Intelligence. Computational Intelligence. 21/2, 2005. This paper from the Computer Science Department of Hong Kong Baptist University envisions the Internet evolving from its present information search and mining tools to achieve organic properties of self-organization, growth and reproduction, autocatalysis, semantics and so on. By these qualities, a capacity for wise knowledge of service to individual and social welfare is attained.

The next generation Web Intelligence aims at enabling users to go beyond the existing online information search and knowledge queries functionalities and to gain, from the Web, practical wisdom for problem solving. To support such a Wisdom Web, we envision that a grid-like computing infrastructure with intelligent service agencies is needed, where these agencies can interact, self-organize, learn, and evolve their course of actions, identities, and interrelationships for new knowledge creation, as well as scientific and social evolution. (111)

Christakis, Nicholas and James Fowler. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Reviewed more in Current Vistas, one of the strongest testaments so far of the evolutionary and historic rise of a superorganic human society that is beginning to learn and think "on its own."

Christensen, Wayne. Self-Directedness, Integration and Higher Cognition. Language Sciences. 26/6, 2004. In an issue on “Distributed Cognition and Integrational Linguistics,” a University of KwaZulu-Natal philosopher considers how persons converse and learn within a social milieu. The premise of this school is that cognitive processes now reside beyond individual human brains amongst people and artifacts such as computers and libraries, broaching on a collective intelligence and thought.

Christian, David. World History in Context. Journal of World History. 14/4, 2003. A scholarly proposal to accompany his book Maps of Time that historians need to situate the study of specific events in a global arena, and then expand further to a cosmic evolutionary frame, in order to fully appreciate what is going on. Once again, a “collective learning” of human societies is noted as the most distinguishing human attribute. Once again, Natural Genesis is based on this very premise that a composite knowledge now graces the earth and needs to be recognized, gathered and documented.

Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. The University of Edinburgh philosopher, along with David Chalmers who writes a Foreword, advocates that a person’s mental activity is not confined to a brain, but extends into a technologically communicative society such that ones mindfulness imbues this expanded compass. Our interest is piqued for such a view seems to imply the nascent presence of a local and global cerebral faculty and cogitation.

Clery, Daniel and David Voss. All for One and One for All. Science. 308/809, 2005. An introduction to a special section and update on a worldwide “Distributed Computing.” Typical articles are Service-Oriented Science by Ian Foster and Cyberinfrastructure for e-Science by Tony Hey and Anne Trefethen.

Cobb, Jennifer. Cybergrace. New York: Crown, 1998. An IT professional views the Internet as an embryonic world sensorium with an integrative and spiritual potential to inform, heal and empower a humane earth community.

Combs, Allan and Stanley Krippner. Collective Consciousness and the Social Brain. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 15/10-11, 2008. Wise neuropsychologist elders observe ”similar dynamical patterns” of coherent neural networks to grace both brains and human groups, each capable of a unified sense of awareness, cognition, and knowledge. See also in this issue on Social Approaches to Consciousness a paper by Robert Turner and Charles Whitehead on How Collective Representations Can Change the Structure of the Brain.

Davidson, Cathy and David Goldberg. The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513593. An online MacArthur Foundation report which is also available in paper from MIT Press, and is to be expanded into a 2010 book. Computer revolutions have engendered a world-wide community access to the entire corpus of human knowledge, which then challenges educational endeavors to keep apace.

Davies, John, et al, eds. Semantic Web Technologies. Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2006. The global computer Internet is under revision and reinvention based on a new generation of interactive ontologies and protocols to better foster information accessibility, commerce, and dialogue. The name given is Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies whose many dimensions are explored herein from annotation principles to digital libraries.

De Wolf, Tom and Tom Holvoet. Emergence versus Self-organization. Brueckner, Sven, et al, eds. Engineering Self-Organizing Systems. Berlin: Springer, 2005. In a volume which seeks a scientific practice more in accord with a dynamically viable nature, Belgian computer scientists advise that this project need avail itself of a synthesis best informed by far-from-equilibrium complex adaptive systems.

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