Internet, a new life form?

It grows, it fixes damage to itself, it has knowledge... Does it have feelings? Does it think?

I think it does have feelings and does think, since the internet is (in one aspect) a community of communicating, thinking and feeling entities (humans). Communication on one level is thought on another, and I suppose communication of feelings (not philosophy about them, but telling each other what we feel, maybe through art instead of words) could be considered feeling at the community level.

Communities can be considered lifeforms, although we usually only do that with communities of "stupid" lifeforms, not humans. The internet is a new(ish) form of community, so... yeah.

Well, there you go.

Going a bit further, I would say that maybe we are usually a bit too limited in the way we define certain entities in the universe. When we talk about life the first thing that comes to mind are humans and then animals. Many people are hard pressed to start thinking about anything further than that, unless they watched Star Trek I suppose. Even the more outlandish thinkers among us have to struggle not to limit their definitions to only a certain framework of what they know well enough.

So.. do life forms have to be organic? No.

Do life forms have to talk with one voice? Hmm? No? No.

Do life forms have to have a defined body shape? No.

Going further, isn't everything in the universe just a network of little, very little things interacting with each other on some level? Atoms interact each other to form moleculs which interact with each other to form elements which interact with each other to form brain cells which interact with each other to create a human brain and the nervous system which makes our bodies alive.

From nanocosmos to the microcosmos to the, well.. cosmos we can see by our own eyes.. but there's more...

Macrocosmoses.. may internet be one of them? Those humans that we now have, consisted of these atoms, moleculs and elements all interacting with each other are again part of something even bigger. I might dare suggest that this could go on forever. We, part of a society networked through a body of internet. Internets, networks of collective intelligence connected into an even bigger organism.. may we come to the pan-theistic kind of universe that thinks because we think? We are part of God because we are part of the organisms which create bigger organisms which create even bigger organisms which create the universe.

Like planets, star systems, star clusters, galaxies, galaxy clusters, clusters of galaxy clusters and clusters of clusters of galaxy clusters and further organisms we didn't name yet.

Bottom line.. the universe is a network. We are a network of components smaller than ourselves and ourselves are smaller components of a larger network which is a small component to an even larger network.

There is something very powerful to be discovered in this way of thinking. Equality, feeling of being part of something incredibly big, foresight which enables us to, now that we know the big picture, play our role in modifying it. Instead of being what we may, by default, be, cells that operate on the autopilot, we can become self aware and aware of the larger organism that we make up at the same time, becoming a pro-active cell which causes the overall body to evolve faster.

Is the Internet alive? Well according to the Wikipedia article on Life it doesn't seem so as it seems to be a biological term which ties in with organisms. Despite this the conventional definition is as follows:

And as far as I can see the Internet can do all but reproduce (which is a disputed definition as is explained later in the article). So under these definitions one can say it is alive. But what makes it grow, thrive - live? It is us, the human race which does this as it were, for, the Internet. Thus can one argue that we are this life form's cells, living, reproducing and dying just as the cells in our body do - we even on occasions attack each other like cancer.

Thus I think it is life, but not quite the same as the biologists know it

In scratching around at this it seems that interesting revelations may arise from asking the question "what difference does the network make?". Take the new facilities the network offers compared with offline life, we get more information, convenient transactions, persistence and greater reach in expression, and collaboration. These have many implications.

Are we, as a group, dumbing down or smarting up? There's a battle here, vested interests drive a dumbing down and there are plenty of willing victims. I think education should include self life-coaching to save the lazy from excessive resources wasted on fruitless exercises in general, not just online.

Many smart people automatically use any opportunity to improve themselves, that is amplified on the net. I can't imagine what my world view would be without the net, similar core ethics I guess, I was always a reader of heavy topics, but now I have more detail and moderation due to considering other views.

Back to the original generalisation, what is the internet and also what it could become. My first reaction is that this depends on what humans are, and what we could become. We designate our species "Man the Thinker", for me our potential lies in becoming "Human the Carer".

Ethical campaigning aside, is there something distinct about the net that is feeding back into what humans are? A perfect example is identity, online people are more likely to see themselves as part of the total group. Is the net facilitating the rise of a hive mind?

Well, it's like they say in Star Trek: "It's life Jim, but not as we know it".

That's what makes it a new life form, even better a new kind of a life form.

All of these benefits come from the fact that, naturally, network is efficiently interconnected. So maybe we could think of the pre-networks era as a time when we were still more or less as groups of cells isolated from each other. As we continued to evolve we ended up creating a network that can finally pretty much hook us all up into this new organism of which we are an essential part of and help us, through this new collective brain we created, learn more about us and how can we be better.

So yes.. to the following question:

Yes I think there is something that is feeding back. What it is? Well.. I think it may be the idea of the universe at large being much like a network which is making us humans think about the world in a more pluralistic way, understanding the connections and the importance of those connections better, looking beyond ourselves into other "nodes", fascinating ourselves with the bigger picture that this reveals. In other words, the network is feeding us back a better understanding of the interconnectedness of the universe and the benefits of better interconnectedness between humans as well, benefits of collaboration, regard for others, creativity as one way of communicating and other surrounding ideas.

I think so. That really seems to fit the picture with regard to this topic. Internet as a life form with a hive mind, but not necessarily in a dark way in which many scifi movies seem to portray such a concept (like the Borg). It is, in other words, a collective intelligence.

Edit: The difference between the Borg hive mind and the internet mind is in that individual nodes or cells or simply humans within this "hive" have complete autonomy. They can disconnect and hence disappear as a functioning node of the mind. They can also decide in which way they will function as part of the hive. This almost calls in a paradox between a seemingly organized and centralized collective intelligence and the fact that it in fact is based upon a completely decentralized and rather chaotic system. The paradox is in the fact that it actually works anyway. Perhaps this was an idea too outrageous even for science fiction writers (so they usually tend to the darker and simpler version of the hive mind or collective intelligence systems, like Borg or the Matrix), BUT this is reality, this time beating even scifi I suppose.

And by the way, this is really a great topic for reminding everyone about that excellent video once featured on YouTube: Web 2.0 is us which really reveals an even bigger idea (which doesn't include a currently hot buzzword); the network is/are us.

Edit2: Just watched that video and got another thought to share. This network is not something that is really anyhow separate from us. Just because we have to use computers, cables, wireless signals and other technologies to make it happen doesn't really change the fact that this is nothing else but an enabler, the real network here is not connecting those computers. It is connecting people. Computers are merely an architecture (which is, besides, blending better and better with ourselves anyway). They are just the synapses between cells that we are. So in essence, the network life form is not something alien that we are suddenly hooked in (and because of that isn't anything scary). It is, simply, us, collectively existing as another organism, a collective organism in addition to the individual organism that we are.

While I believe the idea has a lot of interesting thought points, there's one signifigant thing that makes me sit up...

If we view the human community as a single organism, and not a collection of individuals, do we then begin to think of "diseases" of the organism? Could racism be considered a disease? It's harmful, it spreads and it takes a toll on the well-being of the entire organism... Most certainly FITS the definition...

That then leads to the question... We've got an endangered species, the human community under "biological" attack... Do we have an obligation to "cure" the disease to protect it's well-being, or allow the "disease" to spread despite the costs?

In a perfect world, we'd talk to the disease to get rid of it - in reality we remove chunks of flesh to cure a cancer, blast healthy cells with near toxic levels of chemicals and hope that they recover.

If thinking of the human community as a single life form means that we forget there are individuals - some that may even been seen as a disease - then frankly I'm willing to reject the idea. I much rather see things as an ecosystem, where everything impacts the other, without central governance.

Well, in this organism there's no "brain of the operation" without the collective that makes it up. So in a sense, without individuals AND their autonomy to think for themselves the brain wouldn't be what it is. So, no I don't think it has central governance.

The diseases are cured by resolving the source of it, not blasting the diseased parts. So we wouldn't be allowing the disease to spread, but wouldn't be removing the chunks of body either. Instead we find what is behind it and solve that. To be more concrete, instead of targeting specific people we target the idea, the harmful philosophy, not the people who may carry it. So instead of eradicating those people or their minds, we simply, through collective action, make such harmful ideas undesirable. And even if there are a few individuals who still carry such thinking, they pose little threat to the well being of the whole organism.

So I would say that thinking about the social network as an organism helps even there, because I wouldn't really want to just eradicate a sick part of my body. That is really always just a desperate move which is almost the same as being defeated by the disease. It is also quite a primitive way of resolving such problems. Instead I would want the very thing that is fueling the sickness removed or simply healed; converted back to normal.

I almost think that these ideas conflict. I understand your statement to be "the collective will of the community is the governance". You also admit that this will is made up of individuals. While I support the second part, I fear the first.

The current human collective doesn't care about Freedom in software. By today's standards, it's growing. But who overrides the collective will to silence people like Richard Stallman back in the 80's, before people saw his fears become real? Who would override the collective will that, back when, made people feel that the Inquisition was not only godly but NEEDED?

My point, in short is: Popular isn't always right, humanity has committed evils in great numbers.

I agree. But we don't know how much it is that we don't know. I mean, there are STILL people who believe that homosexuality is a disease and can and should be "cured". Two hundred years ago, it was common to cure disease by "bleeding"... Cutting a patient and letting them bleed out the "bad" blood. It often killed people.

Likewise, in two hundred years our methods of medicine will seem so archaic. We remove tumors with lasers and scalpels. Surgery is so gruesome that the patient has to be given DRUGS to cope with the pain.

What might we know in 200 years about the human brain, and things we consider bad now. Case in point: There is a theory that sexual contact with children is not harmful. This theory argues that it is the social stigma of being "abused" that is harmful. This theory states that in a society that considered sexual activity with children to be "normal" it wouldn't have harmful effects. (I don't speak to the validity of this theory, but as a sexual abuse survivor, I consider the way my family REACTED to it to be more traumatizing than the abuse itself was.)

There are a lot of beliefs in everyday life that we simple don't have the information to make a definitive decision on - humans are fallible.

That's almost my fear, it sounds a LOT like the restriction of free speech or thought. For instance... Smoking is harmful and smokers are now stigmatized. But there are laws in many countries that make smoking illegal. As an EX-smoker (I quit because it didn't make me feel good) I still very strongly support someone's right to smoke. If you have an ethical obligation to protect the organism you'd ban smoking (not kill smokers) at the cost of squashing civil rights.

With all due respect, I'm not talking about spitting on the side walk. Harken back to the Virginia Tech shooting - the guy killed dozens of people and then killed himself. A single cell capable of killing 30 other cells is scary. It makes us look into how this kind of cell spreads, and leads to talk of essentially criminalizing mental disease. There are people who SERIOUSLY would rather the manic depressive shooter been jailed prior to comitting a crime than risk another "massacre".

I consider that to be a "major threat" to the well-being of said human-organism - but some consider my focus on individuals rights to be as big a threat.

My fear there is that we will establish a definition of "normal". Hitler did it when he dictated desirable and undesirable traits. I'm not comparing you to Hitler, but I very much do fear anyone, even in the collective "us" sense, who believe they have the ability to define someone as "normal".

I believe there's an instinctual fear of collective consiousness. There's a reason the Borg are both identical (to one another) and frightening...

Well, those are some interesting points and I doubt my reply will be a full response to it.

What I was trying to get to was the idea of a collective which knows how to weed out the bad and promote the good. This is why I was talking about it as based on a paradox between collective governance and full individual autonomy, because indeed, the two seem quite contradicting.

So.. I guess the question to think about that I was trying to pose is, what if the two could be effectively combined? In fact, I've long believed that there is a way for collectivism and individualism to meet at a balance by making it in every individual's self interest to collaborate to better the collective (I think Free Software effectively does this for the software field).

I just pushed that theme much further by comparing this collective, enhanced and amplified through a network as a life form, a hive mind. And that is apparently entering a bit scarier domain, although because of that all the more challenging and exciting to think about, and maybe learn something in the process.

Let's come back to the internet. It has obviously had more of a positive impact than a negative one, and yet I am seeing it as a collective intelligence at work, although a very complex one. I guess that internet makes me think that it is possible for collective intelligence to be ultimately tended towards general good and be generally benevolent towards all of its individual participants.

A collective of fully free individuals. And even further, a hive mind consisted of fully free minds? And by fully free I mean that none would be pressured to act according to the will of the collective if they decide not to, so one node/mind/individual can step off and attempt to make big changes, like Stallman did, ultimately causing an anomaly that can shift the direction in which the collective/hive/organism is continuing to evolve. Is that possible? Is calling it an "organism", a "hive" too much?