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When did big-picture optimism become cool again? While not blind to potential problems and glitches, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang to the 21st Century confidently asserts that our networked culture is not only inevitable but essential for our species’ survival and eventual migration into space. Author Howard Bloom, believed by many to be R. Buckminster Fuller’s intellectual heir, takes the reader on a dizzying tour of the universe, from its original subatomic particle network to the unimaginable data-processing power of intergalactic communication. His writing is smart and snappy, moving with equal poise through depictions of frenzied bacteria passing along information packets in the form of DNA and nomadic African tribespeople putting their heads together to find water for the next year.

The reader is swept up in Bloom’s vision of the power of mass minds and, before long, can’t help seeing the similarities between ecosystems, street gangs, and the Internet. Were Bloom not so learned and well-respected–more than a third of his book is devoted to notes and references, and luminaries from Lynn Margulis to Richard Metzger have lined up behind him–it would be tempting to dismiss him as a crank. His enthusiasm, the grand scale of his thinking, and his transcendence of traditional academic disciplines can be daunting, but the new outlook yielded to the persistent is simultaneously exciting and humbling. Bloom takes the old-school, sci-fi dystopian vision of group thinking and turns it around–Global Brain predicts that our future’s going to be less like the Borg and more like a great party. –Rob Lightner

Customer Reviews

Is Global Brain God?:

I found Global Brain interesting in concept. It is a good read especially if you have a “scientific” mind.

My only criticism to Bloom’s book is his last three chapters which I feel he should have left out. He is a Sociology professor, not a Scientist, so when he stuck his political agenda in at the end I did not appreciate it. He also made some ridiculous comments that I found offensive like people from Orange County have not traveled (I lived in OC and know many in OC and all of us have widely traveled the World), he does this to make a demeaning point. He also makes statements about Males in the South having higher testerone so they kill each other more…… he tied this to church going…..he also ties Timothy McVeigh into right wing Christianity when McVeigh NEVER claimed to have bombed in the name of Christianity, he was a radical libertarian… basically Bloom is a liberal Atheist which is OK but beware of this when reading his book as that is its final message. Without the above I would have given it four stars.

Otherwise it is thought provoking.

BTW - Howard, spiny lobsters don’t have claws, you were thinking about Maine lobsters in your book although I got the point.

Filled in many gaps:

This book was hard to put down. It filled many gaps in my understanding of how we got to the mess we are (always) in from a historical viewpoint. The author was very thought provoking and accompanied his ideas with a lot of references.

It was fun to read, maybe a little difficult in places.

Recommended for thinking people.

Not worth the money, or the time to read it.:

I bought and read this book to keep a commitment to a friend. That’s the only reason I didn’t trash it after the first couple of chapters.

The author appears to have encountered a great many ideas without ever understanding any one of them. A careful reading will reveal that the author’s objective is to massage the egos of the rich and famous in order to keep his (bragged about) access to their company. It will also weary your brain with passionately argued self-serving nonsense.

I suggest you don’t bother.

Seeing reality despite Howard’s hallucination:

I am a medical professional who thinks of hallucinations as breaks from reality. I am skimming Howard’s book and so far it looks like New Age mysticism. My memory recalls a line from Frank Zappa, ” Who(’re) you jiving with that cosmic debris”.

I felt compelled to give this 1 star because there was no zero. Apparently I have’nt been let into Howard’s “reality as a shared hallucination”. You see, with a scientific background, I notice a great deal of confabulation in Howard’s work.

I am an objectivist (physical reality is what it is whether I believe it or not). I do believe we coevolve within our environment. Interaction is part of the nature of reality and that complexity and emergence are just beginning to be understood.

On the other hand, scientists (we are all to varying degrees keen observers and inductionists) (Klein refers to our thinking as Recognition Primed Decision Making referential to stored memories) theorize about (physical) reality through the scientific use of observation and verification/falsification by experimentation, leading to further hypothesizing and model building and testing by further mathematical calculation (sometimes) and further experimentation. Not to mention the occasional seridipitous discovery. Consider that conceptualization the next time you believe (in defiance of the Laws of physics) that you can sqeeze between those “atoms” that make up a brick wall. I am decidedly not a Husserlian phenomenologist, nor am I a Logical Positivist subjectivist.

So far, I am continuing to read the Global Brain while making margin notes. I see a muddling of definitions ie. the difference between objective reality and subjective perception. Or the confused definition of reality and memory when Howard should be speaking of the remembered present as defined by Edelman in describing consciousness. The map is not the territory as Bateson would say.

There may be valuable information in this book but so far it seems a contrivance of conflated metaphors.

But I suppose Howard Bloom might say I have missed “his” point. To which I might reply “Get real, Howard”. Or is it that you will be my guru guide through this reality you call a hallucination.

Prepare for provoking thought:

I love the way that Howard Bloom thinks, it is always illuminating and never elitist. Reading his books always reminds me of reading something written by Carl Sagan. They both have a playful, quick, and insightful way of looking at the world and they both ask questions that make you think for yourself. Do not take this book as scientific proof of group selection (as nothing is EVER proven) but instead prepare to gain new insights into everything related to how our world works.

Howard’s original book The Lucifer principle still stands on my list of things that everyone could read to better themselves.

The Art of War

Lucifer Principle

The Naked Capitalist

This book will most likely be added to this list once I give it another read. One thing I will say, however, is that Mr. Bloom’s writing has improved in both it’s impact and delivery.