The Internet Brain: Our Most Hopeful Approach to Cultural Harmony?

Photo: linh.ngân

Sometimes it feels like my memory fails me much more than it should.

And yet, more and more research seems to provide evidence to the contrary – that, in fact, all information that has ever passed through our brains is retrievable.

But what if all that information wasn’t actually stored in our brains, and what if that means we’re all even more connected than we thought?

Systems philosopher Ervin Laszlo recently wrote a post at Huffington Post asking the question, If Your Brain Is A Quantum Computer, Can It Connect You To The World? In it, he poses a quantum idea of knowing:

Not only are the neurons of our brain thoroughly entangled with each other–so that they can assemble and then process information with lightning speed–they are also entangled with the world beyond our brain. The logical conclusion is that the bulk of the information picked up and processed by the brain is not stored within the brain; it’s stored in the vast information field that embeds the brain.

Laszlo calls this storage facility of ideas and memories (minus short-term memory) our “cosmically extended natural Internet.” From there, he hypothesizes our brain is kind of like a broadband receiver, scientifically allowing for the possibility of extrasensory (yep, ESP) perception.

We know that travel might just make you smarter, and that visiting foreign places helps to see past the headlines and hype. But what this type of perceiving might mean on a human level is that our brains are trying to constantly link in and harmonize with other people, places, nature, and really, the world at large.

Makes a good argument for those who believe we are all interconnected beyond just our DNA, but does it stack up to the reality of a world heading toward harmony?

What do you think of the idea of brain-as-internet, and do you think it can help bridge differences across cultures? Share your thoughts below.