We are the web...will the web exceed human power?

Above: Synapsis in the human brain, Bottom: Visualisation of the www

Professor Kevin Kelly, founder and director of the magazine Wired, talked in his presentation at the e-week 2007 at Vic about the expanding power of the “machine” – this is how he calls the 55 trillion links, 2 million e-mails a second and one million clicks a day, that make the www – the exchange of information. He mentioned, that right now the web contains moreless the same amount of links and synapses as the human brain – but in the year 2040 it will have as many links as 30 (!) human brains!!

In Kevin Kelly´s opinion, according to this fact menkind has to face themselves with a new point of view: Whereas in earlier times Marshall Mc Luhan´s quote: “Machines are the extensions of human senses” defined the relation men-machine, now the claim is: “Humans are the extensions of machines”. Overall, Kellys relation to technologization seemed to be very positive, nearly without any critique.

K.K´s examples were the raising numbers of interfaces of “the machine”, many more than ordinary personal computers: GPRS-cars, jogging shoes with pulse-clock….the virtual world and the physical world are fusing more and more, he says. The goal of the future, according to Kevin Kelly, will be to delanguage the web – in order to getting an Artificial Intelligence someday.

In between the audience, quite a few questions came up after his performance: Can 30 times more information than the human brain mean 30 times more Intelligence? What is the negative side of the raising amount of information?