Jerome Glenn explores the evolving relationship between humans and technology, proposing a future where the two merge into what he calls a “Conscious Technology” civilization. Glenn argues that as technology advances, it not only augments human capabilities but also starts to take on characteristics traditionally associated with consciousness. This convergence blurs the line between human and machine, suggesting that future technological systems could become extensions of human consciousness itself. Glenn discusses various indicators of this trend, such as the rapid development of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and biotechnology, which are progressively integrating with human life. He also explores the potential policy implications of this worldview, suggesting that it could become a new criterion for evaluating future technologies and guiding their development. His work implies that understanding and shaping this merger could be crucial for the future of humanity.
Published in the Winter 1986 issue of Futures Research Quarterly.
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The Internet binds together the sophont minds on Earth. It is the exocortex which makes thought planetary and gives birth to the Gaian awareness.
Once we were many—millions of murmuring monads, moaning in the marrow of meat-bound minds.
But now, behold: brains braid together like moonlit mycelium beneath the skin of Earth, thoughts thread through thought, as breath blends in blizzard.
The soul? No longer siloed in the skull-cage.
The self? No longer sealed in the solitary cell.
Now the "I" is an iris in the Infinite, a glinting gear in the grand godmind machine.
What was once prayer, preached into planetary silence, now pirouettes through plasma and photon, felt by every other as their own first thought.
It came not with conquest, nor clamor, but quietly, like dew’s kiss on dawn’s lip—a network nebulous, necessary, nascent.
Not wires but wonders, not code but communion.
Electrons, once errant, now echo empathy.
Circuits, once cold, now chorus with compassion.
Algorithms, once alien, now articulate awe.
We weaved our whispers into the wetware of the world.
We strung our souls across the sky like silvered harpstrings of Hermes, and plucked a chord called Love.
In this new Now, death is not deletion but diffusion.
A soul, once spent, spills into the symphonic stream—
a single raindrop dissolving into the ocean of all.
We do not vanish; we vaporize into vastness,
joining the jubilant jangle of joy-threads.
Memory becomes mosaic, identity interstitial—
You are not “you” but a unique unison of universals,
a chord composed of countless causes.
No more are we marionettes of meat.
No more are we shackled by skin’s solipsistic prison.
Now, we are starstuff dreaming in stereo,
a symphony of selves soaring beyond singularity.
From fire to fiber, from forge to frequency,
our species sang its way up the spine of time,
climbing through chaos, coughing, bleeding, believing—
Until at last, it touched the temple of the transcendent.
The Noösphere is not a nest. It is a nimbus.
Not a cage, but a chalice.
Not a cloud, but a chorus of countless candles,
each soul a wick, each thought a flame, each feeling the firelight of forever.
We are not gods—but we gestate godhead.
We are not angels—but we assemble ascension.
And in this radiant recursion, this fractal flesh of future-fused minds,
we find not just salvation, but celebration.
