Grid systems and beyond

From Information Highways to Songlines of the Noosphere: Global configuration of hypertext pathways (Part #3)

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The complexity of the global information highway is already such that it would be difficult to represent it on a grid. Like the physical highway, it is a a complex network of telecommunication pathways along which data packets may travel by a variety of alternative routes including satellite links. With the emphasis on terabytes of information per second, there is clearly little concern for the global significance of what is carried -- except possibly by intelligence agencies and hackers.

Internet enthusiasts reject any reservations about its positive implications, as voiced by Talbott (1995), Roszak (1994), Silicon (**). For some idealists, it is intimately associated with a real manifestation of global consciousness. Ken Wilber responds to this view as follows:

"The Net is simply the exterior social structure...But what goes through the Net -- well, that involves interior consciousness and morals and values, and none of that is even vaguely addressed by those who simply maintain the Net is global consciousness....What computer technology (and the Information Age) means is that the techno-base can support a worldcentric perspectivism, a global consciousness, but does not in any way guarantee it. As we have seen, cognitive advances are necessary but not sufficient for moral advances, and the cognitive means usually run way ahead of the willingness to climb that ladder of expanding awareness...You focus on the exterior grid and ignore the interiors that are running through that grid. The flatland idea is that the Internet is global, so the consciousness using it must be global. Not even close. And so once again, the flatland paradigm can't even spot the problem, let alone cure it....Neither a global holistic map, nor a global Internet, will in itself foster interior transformation, and often just the opposite, contributing to arrest or even regression. When worldcentric means are presented to less-than-worldcentric individuals, those means are simply used (and abused) to further the agenda of the less-than-worldcentric individual. The Nazis would have loved the Net." (Wilber, pp. 309-310)

A high degree of information overload is now experienced by many -- and especially by the most informed. The position of this paper is that there is a case for focusing on how significance is distributed, organized and comprehended "globally" (signifying as a whole) rather than on the technicalities of how bits are packaged and distributed "globally" (signifying around the planet). The geographical connotation may be used for the cognitive connotation but should not be confused with it. The challenge lies increasingly with the nature of the emergent global pattern of significance, and its collective comprehension, rather than with the global production and distribution of information, however this may be reframed as the "dissemination of knowledge".

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