Think about this,” he continued. “As we speak, engineers are building the Internet to link every part of the
world in much the same way as a fetus develops a central
nervous system. Virtually no one questions the desirability
of the Internet. It seems that humans are born with the
instinct to create it and embrace it. The instinct of beavers
is to build dams; the instinct of humans is to build communication systems.”
“I don’t think instinct is making us build the Internet. I
think people are trying to make money off it. It’s just capitalism,” I replied.
“Capitalism is only part of it,” he countered. “In the
1990s investors threw money at any Internet company that
asked for it. Economics went out the window. Rationality
can’t explain our obsession with the Internet. The need to
build the Internet comes from something inside us, something programmed, something we can’t resist.”
He was right about the Internet being somewhat irrational. I wasn’t going to win that debate and this was not a
place to jump in. He had a lot more to say.
“Humanity is developing a sort of global eyesight as
millions of video cameras on satellites, desktops, and street
corners are connected to the Internet. In your lifetime it
will be possible to see almost anything on the planet from
any computer. And society’s intelligence is merging over the
Internet, creating, in effect, a global mind that can do vastly
more than any individual mind. Eventually everything that
is known by one person will be available to all. A decision
can be made by the collective mind of humanity and
instantly communicated to the body of society.
In the distant future, humans will learn to control the
weather, to manipulate DNA, and to build whole new
worlds out of raw matter. There is no logical limit to how
much our collective power will grow. A billion years from
now, if a visitor from another dimension observed humanity, he might perceive it to be one large entity with a consciousness and purpose, and not a collection of relatively
uninteresting individuals.”
“Are you saying we’re evolving into God?”
“I’m saying we’re the building blocks of God, in the
early stages of reassembling.”
“I think I’d know it if we were part of an omnipotent
being,” I said.
“Would you? Your skin cells are not aware that they are
part of a human being. Skin cells are not equipped for that
knowledge. They are equipped to do what they do and
nothing more. Likewise, if we humans—and all the plants
and animals and dirt and rocks—were components of God,
would we have the capacity to know it?”
“So, you’re saying God blew himself to bits—I guess
that was the Big Bang—and now he’s piecing himself back
together?” I asked.
“He is discovering the answer to his only question.”
“Does God have consciousness yet? Does he know he’s
reassembling himself?”
“He does. Otherwise you could not have asked the
question, and I could not have answered.”