HIVE MIND
Imagine a future where you can wirelessly merge with another human mind. Imagine stepping into the mind and perspective of anyone on the planet at any time and having billions of other people who could do the same to you. In many ways, this is the web in its present state and we are all experiencing the beginning of the age of the digital hivemind.
The concept of hivemind presents enormous philosophical questions. Modern culture tells us that we are special, one-of-a-kind among the vastness of an infinite cosmos. Yet, the science of the brain is telling a very different story and the technologies being developed right now may prove that a cultural digital hivemind is inevitable.
When most people hear the term hivemind, they think of a dystopian future filled with cyborg zombies with laser red eyes and a central control system. The familiar icons of the Star Trek Borg or Agent Smith from The Matrix dominate our cultural consciousness when we think about the hivemind. However, the main reason we view the hivemind as offensive is that it punctures and penetrates the fragile philosophical scaffolding that surrounds the mythology of the individual.
I say mythology because we have no idea what it feels like to truly be the other. We have no idea what it really feels like to be inside the mind of another human being. Sure, we can empathize and try and imagine what someone else is feeling but a one-to-one correlation does not exist. Not yet. But that may change in the near future.
You see, the future will not allow us to segment ourselves into marketable demographics. The rate of change in the era of exponential information awareness will outpace these antiquated models of the self. We mimic, we concur and we subscribe to the myth of the individual self. My money, my food, my land, my tribe, my body, my mind. However, can this myth of the individual self survive a transparent digital future? I’m not sure it can.
The WEB is a primary and primitive version of the future hivemind. This superorganism or global brain is still developing. With only 40% of the world’s population online today, we still have no idea what effect total digital saturation will have on our species. What will our world be like in the future when everyone is connected digitally brain to brain?
The web is, in fact, an entry point into the hivemind. It metabolizes our keystrokes, video uploads, thoughts, and behavioral patterns. It then sends this digital nutrient out to our minds, and we nurse and suckle on the minds of our fellow human beings.
The HiveMind concept stirs the amygdala, igniting our primal fear of being devoured, annihilated, and absorbed into the void. Our unconscious mind screams out in protest.
After all, religions, corporations, governments, social networks, even marketing experts promote the idea of the individual; a single unit with defined personal boundaries, likes, and dislikes, to be quantified, verified, and identified.
Besides, how else would they sell you pizza, materialistic placebos, and paranoia? How would they collect their tax, create highrises, and exclusive country clubs? The ego needs to feed, so we are told. Feels good to be an individual right? Then why are so many people plagued by endless and unrelenting loneliness? Technology is about to change the myth of the individual forever. But the question remains, Are we ready?
Can we survive as a species if we continue to view ourselves as individuals or must we dissolve into the collective hive mind?