Global Brain - Historical Conceptions - Evolutionary Cybernetics

Evolutionary Cybernetics

Systems theorists and cyberneticists commonly describe the emergence of a higher order system in evolutionary development as a "metasystem transition" (a concept introduced by Valentin Turchin) or a "major evolutionary transition". Such a metasystem consists of a group of subsystems that work together in a coordinated, goal-directed manner. It is as such much more powerful and intelligent than its constituent systems. Francis Heylighen has argued that the global brain is an emerging metasystem with respect to the level of individual human intelligence, and investigated the specific evolutionary mechanisms that promote this transition

In this scenario, the Internet fulfills the role of the network of "nerves" that interconnect the subsystems and thus coordinates their activity. The cybernetic approach makes it possible to develop mathematical models and simulations of the processes of self-organization through which such coordination and collective intelligence emerges.