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Detecting a global consciousness |
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Score
73%
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11 votes,
Feasibility
89%
Originality
90%
Humour
47% |
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The concept of a global consciousness is not a new one: Jung referred to something called the ‘Collective Unconsciousness’, while Teilhard de Chardin called this unified human consciousness the ‘noosphere’, to distinguish it from the geosphere (the non-living world) and the biosphere (the living world). With the advent of the internet and random-generation computer technology, though, a project to try and detect global consciousness has been made possible. The Global Consciousness Project (GCP), based at Princeton University in the US, uses a network of random event generators (REGs) located around the world. The random data from these generators is then analysed at the host server in Princeton. Any substantial world events or happenings are then measured against the data to see if there are any anomalies from the randomness. That is to say, the machine notes correlations between major events and coherence or patterns emerging in the data. These correlations, the project speculates, are due in some way to the effect of a global consciousness: human emotions and responses giving structure to the randomness.
‘The chances of the predicted deviations all occurring are a combined ten million to one’
The REGs are, esssentially, advanced coin-tossers, and they send in their results (how many heads and tails, to continue the analogy) to the host machine in Princeton. The analysis of the random data then notes any patterns emerging which deviate significantly from a random path: ten or twenty ‘heads’ in a row, for example. Armed with the concept of the global consciousness, the researchers predict when such patterns might emerge: such events as the World Cup final, Princess Diana’s funeral, or the minutes around the start of a new year. They then analyse the data to see if any patterns emerged at that particular time, to see if focused human attention can affect the data in some way. Over 100 of these analyses have been done thus far, and the correlations have always occurred: the chances of these predicted deviations happening in this way is, the researchers say, a combined ten million to one.
The researchers have no knowledge of how or why these correlations occur, merely stating that there are signs of subtle communication on a global scale. The possibilities of electrical charges affecting the numbers is avoided by the REGs being located around the world. Thus, millions of people in the UK phoning each other on mobile phones or switching on the television to watch Diana’s funeral could have no physical electronic effect on a REG in India, for example. But no-one is sure how the human brain could affect the creation of the random data. Matt Pilkington, of the Fortean Times in London, suggests that because the brain is an electrical device, it is not inconceivable that it might have an effect on magnetic fields. This would account for the electronic REGs being affected by shared moments of emotion and focus.
‘The most striking correlation took place on September 11th’
The most compelling piece of evidence the project has amassed thus far, the most striking correlation between a major event and a structure occurring to the random data, occurred on September 11th. On that day, the data was non-random to the point that the researchers said that, “if you had not known September 11th was unusual, you would’ve settled on September 11th as being an unusual day”, purely because of the structured results which lasted for several hours. The project’s website contains a detailed analysis of the day’s data, and explains its methodology of data collection and analysis.
The general consensus of the researchers of the project and ‘anomaly’ experts worldwide is that it is far too early to say what, if anything, this all means. The power of the internet and new technology has provided the means by which an approach can be taken to attempting to detect a global consciousness, but the analysis (and methodology) is still at a fledgling stage. It remains to be seen whether De Chardin’s statement about the ‘noosphere’, the part of the world of life created by human thought and culture, will ever be proven true:
‘Pushed one against the other by the growth of their number and by the proliferation of their connections, approached one to the other by the reawakening of a common force and by the feeling of a common anxiety, the future human kind will form nothing but an unified consciousness’
The only conclusion for now is that anomalies do seem to correspond to the unusually coherent focus of humans at times of extraordinary events. These could be the first faint, detectable signs of this ‘noosphere’, our global consciousness.
• For more information on the Global Consciousness Project, contact Roger Nelson (rdnelson@princeton.edu) or see the website at http://noosphere.princeton.edu
• For articles on a similar theme in previous Institute books, see ‘The 21st century guru as a collective cyberspace entity’ in DIY Futures (ISI,1996), and ‘The history of the evolution of consciousness’ in Creative Speculations (ISI, 1997). See the back of this book for ordering details.
Summarised from information on the Global Consciousness Project website (http://noosphere.princeton.edu), from an article, entitled ‘Did Sept. 11 events refocus global consciousness?’, in USA Today (December 6th 2001), and from a report by Roger Nelson in the Arlington Institute’s FUTUREdition Volume 5, Number 12 (June 27th 2002; www.arlingtoninstitute.org).
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