Underpinning Global
Brain's rewrite of the evolutionary saga is a new approach to social theory, one
derived not from abstract principles but from observation of the real thing--living
communities of all kinds--including the most fascinating of the lot: societies
of human minds. Global Brain probes the rise of Stone Age cities thousands
of years before Ur and Babylon, and explores how these little-known urban centers changed the very
nature of human identity.
Neolithic
Maltese "goddess," circa 3,000 b.c.
click
photo for "First Came the Mammoth, Then Came Architecture," a
pictorial prehistory of cities from the Ice Age to the Stone Age
It shows how transnational
subcultures arose in Greece a hundred years before the glory days of Athens, and
how these havens for unconventional men and women transformed the mechanism of
collective creativity. Then Global Brain reveals how the sometimes brutal political
stances promoted by Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato still struggle for dominance
in the first decade of the 21st century.
click
on photo for visions of the future
Global Brain presents evidence that
the shared intelligence of humankind is part of a larger planetary mind, one that
combines the learning of microbes, waterfowl, predatory cats, idealists, militants,
religionists, and scientists. The book predicts that the great world war of the
21st century will take place between the collective intelligence of humanity and
that of a world wide web 96 trillion generations old and billions of years wise-the
global Internet between microbial societies.
Finally, Global Brain anticipates some of
the creative paths this planet's team of battlers and borrowers may take during
the next hundred and fifty years.
click
photo for "Reality Is A Mass Hallucination"
Joseph
Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution's End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence,
says "I have finished Howard Bloom's two books, The Lucifer Principle and
Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed,
near overwhelmed by the magnitude of
what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such
an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect
than Bloom's on the planet."
