WEBVTT 00:00:15.193 --> 00:00:22.349 The World Wide Mind is an idea. The World Wide Mind is a concept. 00:00:22.349 --> 00:00:28.810 So what I tried to do in the book is talk about the World Wide Mind as a coming global intelligence. 00:00:28.810 --> 00:00:35.538 And I mean that in the sense of an intelligence with an intentionality and a consciousness of its own, 00:00:35.538 --> 00:00:42.152 entirely part of human intelligence. And what I try to do is get away from the science fiction 00:00:42.152 --> 00:00:46.864 idea that the internet by itself is going to become intelligent. I think that's an absurd idea. 00:00:46.864 --> 00:00:52.451 That's like saying that putting a bunch of transistors together will just get you a radio automatically. 00:00:52.451 --> 00:00:58.761 I don't think that's going to happen. The argument I make is that the World Wide Mind is a combination 00:00:58.761 --> 00:01:05.679 of humans and the internet acting together in concert, and that the combination of the two yield to being, 00:01:05.679 --> 00:01:17.613 which is more power than either in isolation. And that, I argue, gives you the seed of an intelligence that neither has by itself. 00:01:17.613 --> 00:01:23.390 And that's what I think of as the World Wide Mind. 00:01:23.390 --> 00:01:28.065 It's very legitimate to worry that the internet is alienating us from each other. 00:01:28.065 --> 00:01:35.705 You only have to look at figures like the average teenager sends and receives 2,272 texts per month, 00:01:35.705 --> 00:01:40.950 and some teenagers send 14 or 20,000 texts in a month. 00:01:40.950 --> 00:01:44.903 So when you look at numbers like that, you really can't avoid the conclusion that 00:01:44.903 --> 00:01:48.096 they're spending more time looking at the screen than they are looking at people. 00:01:48.096 --> 00:01:56.648 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. 00:01:56.648 --> 00:02:02.881 The argument that I make in the book is that you can incorporate that urge, and by actually fusing technology 00:02:02.881 --> 00:02:08.848 with the body to make that connection through technology a physical connection, 00:02:08.848 --> 00:02:13.523 a connection that you make as part of your own internal bonding experience. 00:02:13.523 --> 00:02:18.350 Here is my own human machine connection. I've got two cochlear implants. 00:02:18.350 --> 00:02:25.914 So what I wear on my ear is a processor where sound goes in the microphone, gets processed by the 00:02:25.914 --> 00:02:34.048 unit here into ones and zeros and the data is sent to a headpiece, which is a radio transmitter with a magnet in it. 00:02:34.048 --> 00:02:42.486 And the magnet will stick to the implant that's in my head. And it's sending data through my skin to that implant. 00:02:42.486 --> 00:02:50.087 And there are electrodes that connect to my auditory nerves that send little pulses of electricity to my auditory nerves 00:02:50.087 --> 00:02:53.736 that recreate the sensation of hearing for me. 00:02:53.736 --> 00:02:58.867 So I'm a guy who actually has 32 electrodes and tens of thousands, 00:02:58.867 --> 00:03:09.282 actually hundreds of thousands of transistors in his head. 00:03:09.282 --> 00:03:17.416 What I hope that we'll learn is that there is a new way to think about how technology 00:03:17.416 --> 00:03:21.710 and human relationships can be brought together. 00:03:21.710 --> 00:03:25.853 Right now people think of these domains as mutually exclusive. 00:03:25.853 --> 00:03:31.022 And what I suggest in the book is that there is a way to put these worlds together 00:03:31.022 --> 00:03:34.405 with physical integration of humans and machines. 00:03:34.405 --> 00:03:39.080 You know, I don't claim that this is something that's around the corner. 00:03:39.080 --> 00:03:43.109 But I do draw from my own personal experience of having a cochlear implant. 00:03:43.109 --> 00:03:47.486 So it is a daily reality of my life to boot up my ear in the morning 00:03:47.486 --> 00:03:52.383 by putting on the processor of my cochlear implant and having it activate 00:03:52.383 --> 00:03:55.462 the computer chips that are in my head. 00:03:55.462 --> 00:03:58.085 So what I'm really trying to say is that technology can be used 00:03:58.085 --> 00:04:02.836 to create more humane connections between people.