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Michael Chorost explores the WORLD WIDE MIND

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    The World Wide Mind is an idea. The World Wide Mind is a concept.
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    So what I tried to do in the book is talk about the World Wide Mind as a coming global intelligence.
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    And I mean that in the sense of an intelligence with an intentionality and a consciousness of its own,
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    entirely part of human intelligence. And what I try to do is get away from the science fiction
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    idea that the internet by itself is going to become intelligent. I think that's an absurd idea.
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    That's like saying that putting a bunch of transistors together will just get you a radio automatically.
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    I don't think that's going to happen. The argument I make is that the World Wide Mind is a combination
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    of humans and the internet acting together in concert, and that the combination of the two yield to being,
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    which is more power than either in isolation. And that, I argue, gives you the seed of an intelligence that neither has by itself.
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    And that's what I think of as the World Wide Mind.
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    It's very legitimate to worry that the internet is alienating us from each other.
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    You only have to look at figures like the average teenager sends and receives 2,272 texts per month,
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    and some teenagers send 14 or 20,000 texts in a month.
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    So when you look at numbers like that, you really can't avoid the conclusion that
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    they're spending more time looking at the screen than they are looking at people.
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    And the argument I make is that you can't really stop that hunger to be connected. You can't stop that urge to look at the screen.
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    The argument that I make in the book is that you can incorporate that urge, and by actually fusing technology
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    with the body to make that connection through technology a physical connection,
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    a connection that you make as part of your own internal bonding experience.
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    Here is my own human machine connection. I've got two cochlear implants.
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    So what I wear on my ear is a processor where sound goes in the microphone, gets processed by the
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    unit here into ones and zeros and the data is sent to a headpiece, which is a radio transmitter with a magnet in it.
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    And the magnet will stick to the implant that's in my head. And it's sending data through my skin to that implant.
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    And there are electrodes that connect to my auditory nerves that send little pulses of electricity to my auditory nerves
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    that recreate the sensation of hearing for me.
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    So I'm a guy who actually has 32 electrodes and tens of thousands,
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    actually hundreds of thousands of transistors in his head.
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    What I hope that we'll learn is that there is a new way to think about how technology
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    and human relationships can be brought together.
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    Right now people think of these domains as mutually exclusive.
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    And what I suggest in the book is that there is a way to put these worlds together
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    with physical integration of humans and machines.
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    You know, I don't claim that this is something that's around the corner.
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    But I do draw from my own personal experience of having a cochlear implant.
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    So it is a daily reality of my life to boot up my ear in the morning
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    by putting on the processor of my cochlear implant and having it activate
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    the computer chips that are in my head.
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    So what I'm really trying to say is that technology can be used
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    to create more humane connections between people.
Title:
Michael Chorost explores the WORLD WIDE MIND
Description:

Michael Chorost explains the way our brains and technology will eventually connect is in a space called the World Wide Mind, a space similar to the Internet.

Get more on Michael Chorost at SimonandSchuster.com: http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Michael-Chorost/60275262?mcd=vd_youtube
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Video Language:
English
Duration:
04:19

English subtitles

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