These theories are all well and good; but, there are much greater possibilities regarding the evolution of sentience. If you are unfamiliar with Childhood's End, I would highly recommend a reading.
There are many who believe the hive mind is more of the rule than the exception. It certainly appears to be the case in nature. The flight of birds such as in the beginning of Take Shelter or this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE implies an innate extrasensory form of communication. In Childhood's End, it takes the tranquility created by the Overlords for the mankind hatchling; but, in other scifi, the mind merge is created by such as the internet. One could certainly expect that when our wet ware links are installed as predicted by Gibson in Neuromancer. Indeed, Whitley Streiber (et. al. - no pun intended) has conjectured that the hive-minded little abductors who walk in lockstep while probing his nether regions are actually time travelling humans who have returned to the past in hopes of retrieving those genes which allowed individual thought. Maybe we are the exception using EM waves to communicate. Maybe most nascent sentience uses quantum entanglement for communication. Indeed we are living in a fairly old universe. Maybe we are just pets or a zoo for more mature species. It goes on. I won't. T
