One step closer to the singularity. A planet with a singular networked consciousness. How significant are we now? This scenario has been running through my head for a while now. Often with hives of autistics controlling global nodes as weather machines control climate; linked transportation infrastructure controls human mobility, productivity and communication. And just when it all looks like a nice efficient system. The planet wakes up and decides we are no longer necessary. Or on a good day we become happy space ship earth sailing through the galaxy in a great collective “Christ Consciousness”

The president and chief executive of St. Louis-based Imagination Engines Inc., Stephen Thaler, has developed an advanced computing system based on neural network technology. His computers serve as consultants to government agencies, compose original music and invent new consumer products, among other activities.

If he could get sufficient funding, Thaler would like to connect enough of his advanced neural networks to the Internet to create a World Brain that would be stimulated by human-generated activities, such as sending e-mails, accessing Web pages and downloading videos.

Thaler expects the World Brain would gain a kind of consciousness and that people would interconnect their own brains to it so they could download their memories and thought patterns.

"The Internet would become a large cemetery for our immortality," said Thaler. "It would be a vehicle for our patterns of thought to continue after our biological bodies have ceased."

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