Part 2/15:
Howard Bloom: From Cultural Icon to Cosmic Thinker
Howard Bloom recounts a serendipitous online encounter that predates the internet era—his discovery of a pioneering virtual community discussing the global brain concept, a term central to understanding interconnected intelligence. His curiosity about whether this global intelligence was a modern phenomenon or rooted in the deep history of life leads him to challenge simplistic notions. He emphasizes that life’s collective intelligence began billions of years ago with bacteria, which operate as decentralized, self-regulating colonies exchanging genetic material in a Darwinian fashion. Bloom argues that this biological precedent underpins the structure of internet-enabled networks and AI systems today.