expert opinions continued

"God, this is GREAT stuff!" Richard Brodie, author, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme, original author/programmer of Microsoft Word.

"My head is still spinning from so much eloquence and content. Howard Bloom says with detail and clarity those things which bite the soul." Valerius Geist, President Wildlife Heritage Ltd., founding Programme Director for Environmental Science, University of Calgary, author of Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design. Towards a Biological Theory of Health.

"As someone who has spent 40 years in psychology with a long-standing interest in evolution, I'll just assimilate Howard Bloom's accomplishment and my amazement." David Smillie, Visiting Professor of Zoology, Duke University.

"Bloom's debut. The Lucifer Principle (1997) sought the biological basis for human evil. Now Bloom is after even bigger game. While cyber-thinkers claim the Internet is bringing us toward some sort of worldwide mind. Bloom believes we've had one all along. Drawing on information theory, debates within evolutionary' biology, and research psychology (among other disciplines), Bloom understands the development of life on Earth as a series of achievements in collective information processing. He stands up for 'group selection' (a minority view among evolutionists) and traces cooperation among organisms—and competition between groups—throughout the history of evolution. 'Creative webs' of early microorganisms teamed up to go after food sources: modern colonies of E. coli bacteria seem to program themselves for useful, nonrandom mutations. Octopi "teach" one another to avoid aversive stimuli. Ancient Sparta killed its weakest infants; Athens educated them. Each of these is a social learning system. And each such system relies on several functions. 'Conformity enforcers' keep most group members doing the same things; 'diversity generators' seek out new things; 'resource shifters' help the system alter itself to favor new things that work. In Bloom's model, bowling leagues, bacteria, bees, Belgium and brains all behave in similar ways. Lots of real science and some history—much of it fascinating, some of it quite obscure—go into Blooms ambitious, amply footnoted…arguments. …Bloom's concept of collective information processing may startle skeptical readers with its explanatory' power." Publishers Weekly

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