Abstract
In thinking the passage from the “all-human cerebrum” (H.G. Wells) to what one might call the contemporary “all-too-human” cerebrum in neo-liberal societies and beyond to the “all-too-transhuman” cerebrum in the cybernetic society, in contrasting Wells’s idea of a new world order with the dystopia of the disordering un-world (Nancy in The creation of the world or globalization, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2002/2007), in considering the prospects of a “world brain” faced with the realities of the “global mnemotechnical system” (Bernard Stiegler), in highlighting the differences between the global and authoritarian instrument of “control” in Wells and the descriptions of the control society by Deleuze, and finally, in critiquing the “unifying of the general intelligence services of the world” in Wells (World brain, Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, 1938, pp. 3–4) and the capturing of the “general intellect” (Wark in General intellects: twenty-one thinkers for the twenty-first century. Verso Books, London, 2017), this paper maps the contemporary prospects of the “world brain” against the backdrop of the worldweariness of the present.
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Notes
For example, the exploration of the transhumant at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. See Braidotti (2012). The Posthuman. Oxford: Polity Press.
Kurzweil (2016). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. London: Duckworth, 2016.
The general intellect or general social knowledge is a concept found in Marx's Grundrisse. It is a term now used by Paolo Virno, Maurizio Lazzarato, Franco Berardi and others to disclose how "control" works upon the social life process itself.
Interesting research on global information systems is undertaken in Rayward (1999). H.G. Wells's idea of a World Brain: A critical reassessment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50, 7, 557–573.
Elon Musk and Paul Virilio are strange bedfellows but on the issue of the control of humans by A.I. they sound very much alike. For example, Virilio warns that as cybernetics pertains to the direction of people through processes of control and communication between men and machines, the transhuman dimension of the internet and the cybernetic society itself imperils freedom and democracy—notions which we know Wells strove in his own way to protect. In Politics of the Very Worst (1996/1999), Virilio writes (p. 80): “[W]hen people vaunt the world brain by declaring that humans are no longer human but neurons inside a world brain, and that interactivity favors this phenomenon, its more than just a question of the society of control - it’s the cybernetic society… the very opposite of freedom and democracy.”
Echoing the difference Wellsian between static and kinetic utopias, Deleuze and Guattari in What is Philosophy? make a distinction between transcendent and immanent utopias and question if the term utopia needs to be replaced by another. They write (1991/1994, p. 100): “In utopia (as in philosophy) there is always the risk of a restoration, and sometimes a proud affirmation, of transcendence, so that we need to distinguish between authoritarian utopias, or utopias of transcendence, and immanent, revolutionary, libertarian utopias. But to say that revolution is itself utopia of immanence is not to say that it is a dream, something that is not realized or that is only realized by betraying itself. On the contrary, it is to posit revolution as plane of immanence, infinite movement and absolute survey, but to the extent that these features connect up with what is real here and now in the struggle against capitalism, relaunching new struggles whenever the earlier one is betrayed. The word utopia therefore designates that conjunction of philosophy, or of the concept, with the present milieu—political philosophy… (perhaps utopia is not the best word).”
Starr (2017, p. 175) argues that Wells's idea of the world brain to some extent foresees the internet as a “universal information system”. He argues that while Wells could not have forecasted the possibility of electronic computer networking “as a specific form” he nonetheless discerns “the revolutionary potentials of such a global information resource”.
Echoing such concerns, Serres argues (2012/2015): “We, the grown-ups have turned our society of the spectacle into a pedagogical society whose omnipotent, miserable rivalry increasingly pushes schools and universities aside.”
The “transindividual” refers neither to a singular individual nor to a collective, but it is the co-individuation of the “I” and “we” in a pre-individual milieu.
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Bradley, J.P.N. Cerebra: “All-Human”, “All-Too-Human”, “All-Too-Transhuman”. Stud Philos Educ 37, 401–415 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9609-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9609-4