Cards On Table IV: Bio-metaphor I

br> Rough draft: Version 0.9, © Valerie Gremillion 2000

Biological metaphor I:
The Evolutionary Transition Facing Humanity

(This piece follows from Basic Concepts: Connection + Communication ) Due to the changes in the structure of the information flow that it promotes, the internet, then, is critical for the evolutionary transition that humans have reached. With it, we can trade-in One-to-Many communication for Many-to-Many. This technical improvement can change the information flow.. thus human perceptions of the world.. thus human behavior in the world. There is a biological metaphor for this transition that may help point our desired direction. Invertebrate organisms - like snails and oysters and lobsters - have a very different kind of nervous system than vertebrates/mammals do. Invertebrates have quite small nervous systems - 40,000 neurons is a typical number. And the cells themselves are so stereotypical from individual to individual that they can label each and every neuron according to its place in the circuitry and the function it performs - cell L32 connects to these five other neurons that lifts its tail, for instance. More than that, all neurons in these creatures are not "equal". That is, neuron L32 may be a 'command neuron' - it controls other neurons, inducing them to lift the tail, for instance. If we remove L32, the organism can no longer move its tail. L32 was in fact the sole owner of that role in the circuit, and indispensable. It might be quick at inducing that tail lift, but the structure of the system is vulnerable to damage. More than that, all neurons in the system are constrained to defined and mostly subsidiary roles, never to expand or change. It is kind of a one-to-many system, with all of those constraints and problems as well as the advantage of having clear, simple behaviors. Note, though, that crawfish are not the most brilliant creatures in the world. Their neural organization constrains what they can perceive, the picture they can build of the world, as well as what they can do, the impact they can have. They don't think, create, conceptualize, build - mostly, they react to stimuli. So what if you don't want simple behaviors? The world is complex, and your average crawfish isn't up to all that complexity. Vertebrate brains, like those of mammals, are completely different than this. First of all, they tend to have billions of neurons rather than thousands. Secondly… while the neurons are arranged in circuits, command neurons don't exist. One neuron is not 'higher' than another, does not control a reflex or a behavior, is not at the top of a hierarchy. You could go into a mammalian brain and take out ANY neuron - and it would change nothing. Nada. Because these neurons are arranged in a far more egalitarian way: it takes many of them to have an effect on any receiving neuron, so one neuron cannot control a behavior or a part of the system: there must instead be coordinated ction, agreement - concensus, in a way. This *is* slower, having thousands or millions of neurons need to interact to produce an effect - but because there are so many cells involved, it is still quite fast. More than that, these neurons aren't dedicated to a single task - they are always multitasking, so that while it takes longer to do one behavior, they can do 3 or 4 or more behaviors at the same time. This creates more complex behaviors, allows more difficult tasks, allows tasks to be grouped, and solutions found and created. It allows 'Us' to exist, to create, to think, in other words. The point is that the structure of information flow in the crawfish works perfectly well for it, in its simple behaviors. In the same way, our communication systems and how they have been controlled by the top of the hierarchy, have worked, in generating simple and clear behaviors, in controlling humans, in confining them to specific roles, in preventing complexity and creativity. These systems worked, for humans, better perhaps when we lived in small villages, when thousands of people was a lot. But now - there are billions of us. And still a very small number of humans controls the wealth, the information flow, and the potential behavior of other humans. If we want simple and clear and constrained behaviors, if we don't need creativity or growth or change or evolution, then his is still fine. But if we want to expand our potential and express creativity at the level of individuals as well as cultures - if we want to be able to perceive and understand our world and ourselves more deeply, and be able to have act and not simply re-act - then the structure of information flow in the system must change. The Internet can be the carrier for this evolutionary transition of human communication structure. The task of GlobalDialog is to allow for these many-to-many interactions in a way that does not overwhelm us, that optimizes what we can digest and understand, and allows us to contribute, perceive, express, and act more effectively in the world. A new set of structures, without hierarchy, without built-in position or wealth or power, will remove the constraints on us as individuals, will allow us to be creative and full-express our potential, while still interacting in a larger framework that can itself evolve. The choice is ours then: the destinies of invertebrate snails and vertebrate carnivores like Homo sapiens are not that same. Vertebrates took a path which led them to greater complexity and further evolution; invertebrates did not. We, now, can choose consciously which path we desire the old way, or the new way, which points to a continuing trajectory of evolution for our species. See also More Bio-metaphors