*Please distribute to others who may be interested...* You are hereby invited to the next weekly seminar in our interdisciplinary series on Evolution, Complexity and Cognition<http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108>(ECCO).
*Time*:* Friday, November 4th* 14:00-16:00 p.m *Place*: *Room B 0.036* (building B, level 0, close to the human sciences computer rooms), on the VUB Campus Etterbeek (Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels), in collaboration with MOSI. Coffee available. Free entrance: everybody welcome! * * ------------------------------ The Future Internet as a Global Brain: an update of the theory Francis Heylighen <http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html> (Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group, VUB) *Abstract* Thanks to the sponsoring by the Internet investor Yuri Milner, the ECCO research group will soon be launching a "Global Brain Institute" (GBI) at the VUB. This provides a good occasion for summarizing the research that will form the focus of this new institute. The Global Brain can be defined as the emergence of a distributed, planetary intelligence supported by the Internet. The seminar will first summarize the history of research in this domain, starting over a century ago with the pioneers Herbert Spencer, Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Otlet and H.G. Wells, and building up to the creation of the world-wide web in the 1990s. It will then sketch the present situation and the contributions of the ECCO research group. The seminar concludes by proposing conceptual foundations for a future theory of the global brain. The global brain would emerge by the self-organization of the network of people, computers and various tools, facilitated by the directed propagation of challenges from agent to agent across a global medium. Its function will be to coordinate (and thus increase the synergy between) all human and machine activities. The global brain would thus play the role of a nervous system for the planetary organism. *References* Heylighen F. (2011) The GBI Vision: past, present and future context of global brain research <http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/GBI-Vision.pdf>(ECCO working paper 2011-11) Heylighen F. (in press) Self-organization in Communicating Groups<http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Papers/Barcelona-LanguageSO.pdf>: the emergence of coordination, shared references and collective intelligence, in:* Language and Complexity*, Barcelona University Press Heylighen F. (2011) Conceptions of a Global Brain: an historical review<http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/GBconceptions.pdf>, in:* Evolution: Cosmic, Biological, and Social*, pp: 274 - 289, eds: Grinin, L. E., Carneiro, R. L., Korotayev A. V., Spier F., Uchitel Publishing, Moscow. Yuri Milner on the future of the internet<http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/tag/yuri-milner>(transcript of Milner's presentation to the Yalta Annual Meeting in September 2011) ------------------------------ *Upcoming Seminars* *November 25 *Languaging as a process of second order or joint coordination Joachim De Beule (VUB) <http://arti.vub.ac.be/%7Ejoachim/> *December 2 (full day) Workshop:* Worldviews and religiosity: a non-theististic perspective on human experience, meaning and purpose (multiple speakers, see program <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/151>) * December 9 *The origins of the origin: points and cycles as cognitive attractors for ultimate explanations. Clement Vidal <http://clement.vidal.philosophons.com/>(ECCO,VUB) * December 16* The Complexity of Architecture Philip Rutten <[email protected]> * **December 20 (Tuesday!)** *Transformation of uncertainty in the therapeutic process. Jon Echanove <http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonechanove> (AoEC<http://www.aoec.cn.com/>, China) (ECCO) * * More info about the ECCO seminar program: http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108
