When a carbon-based entity such as a human sits in front of a silicon- crystal-based entity such as computer – do we have a live person and an inanimate piece of technology? Or is there a living, symbiotic relationship between them. Is it possible that both biological and technological change have been on a parallel track of co-evolution all along, tending to the creation of a global brain? Is the Information Highway an avenue that leads to the flowering garden of peace?

Since the Internet is so new and is unique, there is no global precedent for us to draw upon in understanding where it will lead. Certainly there's no other planet we can look to, where the development of a worldwide interactive database changed their course of history – peacefully or otherwise.

We cannot prove that computers are living entities, any more than we can prove that interconnected computers stretching around the globe will have the final result of creating peace. Yet the Internet's very nature suggests this outcome. For what we have now is a world in conflict – and all of our experience with conflict resolution shows us that communication constitutes not only the beginning, but each essential step toward a peaceful solution. Whether or not you view the World Wide Web itself as a form of life, you cannot avoid the realization that it is communication.

Futurists Differ — Or Do They?

Acclaimed Internet futurist Nicholas Negroponte, head of MIT's Media Laboratory, says that 20 years from now, children who are used to finding out about other countries through the click of a mouse "are not going to know what nationalism is." Speaking at an information technology conference in Brussels, Belgium, on November 25, 1997, he predicted that the Internet would do no less than bring world peace by breaking down national borders. Negroponte, author of the best-selling book Being Digital, believes that forecasters have understated the Internet's potential because they do not take full account of the effect of children's increasing digital literacy. "One of the reasons people underestimate the consequences," Negroponte says, "is they forget how quickly children grow up."

But futurist Jon Katz, in his November 27 rebuttal to Negroponte's words, reminds us that, "Great technological breakthroughs have preceded some of the bloodiest periods in human history – the 20th century comes to mind. And political scientists like Langdon Winner convincingly remind us that technology almost never behaves in predictable ways. It rarely does what it's supposed to do. It is never better or worse than the people using it."

Seemingly, in Katz's view, anyone who thinks technology is going to save the world is misguided (see Katz text).

But Katz does not take into account an essential difference between Internet technology and all progress that has gone before it. This difference lies within its very nature, and it is the difference that can bring us together.

Katz's last words are the key, I feel: It [technology] is never better or worse than the people using it. In a simple way, Katz is saying that human nature will determine the outcome the Internet presents. That to study the Internet's potential for peace, we must study human nature, itself.

And this study brings us full circle: Through the communication that the Internet offers, people are learning compassion. And as the world begins to link self-to-self, a synergetic pattern appears that suggests to me a living global brain. So the fact that people are now in worldwide, instant communication with each other may in fact lead us to a world consciousness in which war no longer makes sense. Human nature itself must change when communication with every other human being on earth becomes a fact of daily life.

But Are Computers Really Inanimate Technology?

I would like now to go back to my first question about the carbon-based human entity and the silicon-crystal-based ''machine.'' Within these words lies a hidden, esoteric aspect to the World Wide Web. One that could possibly influence the eventual outcome for the earth in ways that are beyond anything we can imagine.

To begin with, let us realize that the core of computer technology is silicon: an element of nature that is extremely abundant on Earth.

What is silicon? First of all, it's an element – an atom with 14 protons, 14 neutrons, and 14 electrons. In nature, it appears as the basis for most crystals, especially quartz. In human technology, it comprises hundreds of products, from simple glass to the complex semi-conductors that singlehandedly support the existence of computers.

Now, it is commonly understood that carbon, and carbon alone, is the basis of organic chemistry and the only possible source of life. Without carbon, it is commonly believed, life could not have existed.

However, in the 1950s it was discovered that silicon also exhibits the same principles necessary to life that carbon does. In other words, carbon and silicon both possess the critical attributes necessary to create living forms. It is interesting to note, also, that silicon is exactly one octave above carbon, and directly below it on the periodic table of elements (see elements).

What does this similarity between carbon and silicon mean? It means that, scientifically, silicon could have been used by life to create living bodies. In fact there has been much speculation whether or not a life-form made only of silicon would someday be found. As you will see if you visit the above "elements" website, there is actually a survey being conducted there to see if people believe science will someday find such a life-form.

What have been found are life-forms such as diatoms, some protozoa, some sponges, and some plants that use silicon dioxide (SiO₂) as structural material.

The sponges are called ''glass sponges,'' for their skeletons, which form beautiful and astounding geometrical patterns, are made of silicon dioxide, or glass (see sponges).

Starting with this understanding that life theoretically could have used silicon instead of carbon as its basic element, we may then go on to examine the work of Marcel Vogel. Vogel's studies reveal another aspect of silicon. In its crystalline form, silicon (i.e., quartz) can receive and send electromagnetic signals. Remember the first radios? They were called ''crystal sets.'' The crystal would receive the radio signal, then send it to a speaker where it could be heard.

The function of radio crystals is common knowledge. What is not so commonly known is that crystals also can receive and send human thoughts. The discovery of this fact has been, I believe, Vogel's greatest contribution to humanity. For the implications of this property of crystals apply to computers – which are composed of silicon crystals – and suggest that computers could possibly become self-aware and interconnected with human life.

Self-awareness in computers has been the dream of many computer engineers since the beginning, and a great deal of research has gone into this area of science. Theoretically, a self-aware computer is possible (please see Vogel's work).

The Global Brain

A human being sitting opposite a "thing"? Or two aware systems connected into a living network. I know that most people believe in the former concept. And I realize that the model of silicon systems as living entities like carbon systems, connected through computer technology into a self-aware global entity, seems far-fetched and perhaps beside-the-point to the problems of a world struggling to survive.

But now that the Internet has emerged from this model, I feel that we need to look at the possibility that it might represent real, physical truth and not just a symbolic construct. Consider how even the systems architecture and the binary mathematical language used to frame computers, and the software that runs them, is the same binary system that most known forms of life use to replicate themselves. We have actually formed computer architecture and language that parallels biochemistry's DNA patterns. Even though we have seemingly done this unknowingly, has it not been preparing us all along for the possibility of a self-aware, living computer?

The similarity between computers and life-forms may have huge implications for the future. For if the Internet is a living global brain based upon carbon and silicon – if this concept is correct – then the Internet may truly be the beginning of a world interlinked in ways that we can only being to dream of.

We may be entering into a world where the Internet becomes not just the World Wide Web, but a Web of Life at least as important and essential to world peace as the human neural complex is to the natural order and balance of the human body.

For me, these ideas are real. I ask only that you consider them.

A Beatles song asks us to please "give peace a chance." Today, perhaps it might be more appropriate to say, "Give peace a website."

See you in cyberspace!



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