Ben Inglis (binglis at ufthm.health.ufl.edu) wrote:
> All the Internet will ever be is an extremely complex set
> of connected computers. It won't become "conscious" and thereby administer
> itself (and put millions of SA types out of work!), for example, while it
> is composed of the sorts of Turing machines it is now. That's not to say that
> some day a fully conscious "computer" might not be produced - an inevitable
> consequence of our understanding consciousness, from past experience (cf.
> the atomic bomb and genetic engineering) - from which a conscious Internet
> might be formed. But don't hold your breath!
I think we have two different agruments here. I think Penrose's
theories are valid only if applied to a computers 'thinking' ie:
computation, calculations, etc...
If the internet can be reduced to a complex of interconnected computers,
then we could probably describe the ocean as being a whole bunch of ships.
I think that each internet neuron should be defined as each user
(US!), not the computer that they are using. Most computers, when
connected to the net are simply word processers and devices to
display, search, share information. It is the information that really
makes the net. This information is generated by neurons which are (we
hope) conscious; hence, the internet is an interconnection of
conscious units: meta-consciousness.
\/\/\/\/\/Elias Tabello\/\/\/\/etabello at chat.carleton.ca\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Only as mind-over-matterist,
as philosopher, scientist,
and informed technician
impersonally and universally preoccupied
is man infallible.
-From No More Secondhand God by RBF
