Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
by Howard Bloom
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In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom-one of today's preeminent thinkers-offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. He shows how plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a worldwide learning machine. He describes the network of life on Earth as one that is, in fact, a "complex adaptive system," a global brain in which each of us plays a sometimes conscious, sometimes unknowing role. And he show more reveals that the World Wide Web is just the latest step in the development of this brain. These are theories as important as they are radical. Informed by twenty years of interdisciplinary research, Bloom takes us on a spellbinding journey back to the big bang to let us see how its fires forged primordial sociality. As he brings us back via surprising routes, we see how our earliest bacterial ancestors built multitrillion-member research-and-development teams a full 3.5 billion years ago. We watch him unravel the previously unrecognized strands of interconnectedness woven by crowds of trilobites, hunting packs of dinosaurs, flocks of flying lizards, troops of baboons making communal decisions, and adventurous tribes of protohumans spreading across continents but still linked by primitive forms of information networking. We soon find ourselves reconsidering our place in the world. Along the way, Bloom offers us exhilarating insights into the strange tricks of body and mind that have organized a variety of life forms: spiny lobsters, which, during the Paleozoic Era, participated in communal marching rituals; and bees, which, during the age of dinosaurs, conducted collective brainwork. This fascinating tour continues on to the sometimes brutal subculture wars that have spurred the growth of human civilization since the Stone Age. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains, immersing us in a matrix of truth and mass delusion that we think of as reality. Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution; it is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why. show lessTags
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I had recently read another of Blooms works, and took some time off before reading this one. I was under the impression that it would be more focused on the internet age (it was written in 2002) but in fact focuses more on a historical and biological evolution of global consciousness. As always Bloom provides copious references, footnotes and the like (about 1/3 of the actual book volume). It was a good read, if a little detail-heavy at times, and I like where he ended up. Worth reading if only for historical lessons in biology and sociology.
Bad writing, outdated. The bibliography is large but generally obsolete by 2023.
The evolution of mass mind from the big bang to the 21st century
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Howard Bloom was a legendary publicist in the 1970s and 1980s for singers and bands such as Prince, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, and Styx. Since then, he has published six books on human evolution and group behavior, including The Genius of the Beast, Global Brain, and The Lucifer Principle. In his Zelig-like career, Bloom has been cited, thanked, show more anthologized, and quoted in books on quantum physics, genetics, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and much more. How I Accidentally Started The Sixties may be his strangest book yet. show less
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- Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
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- 331
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- 95,608
- Reviews
- 3
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- (3.66)
- Languages
- English, French, German
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 3
