Power and politics: A threat to the Global Brain

摘要

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. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.