Metaman: Humans, Machines and the Birth of a Global Super-organism - Hardcover

In this book, the author explores the thesis that human society is becoming an immense living being - a global super-organism in which humans, knitted together by modern technology and communication, are playing a role akin to the individual cells in an animal's body. It presents a case that this biological interpretation of human society, which has frequently been used in the past as a metaphor, is now actually becoming a reality. This book calls this super-organism "Metaman", meaning "beyond and transcending humans". The name both acknowledges humanity's key role in the entity's formation and stresses that, though human centred, it is more than humanity alone. Metaman also includes the crops, livestock, machines, buildings, and other non-human elements that are an integral part of the human enterprise. Through an examination of the implications of the arrival of a global economy and culture, the evolution of machine intelligence and the advent of genetic engineering, the author explains the larger significance of human society in the ongoing evolution of life. The changes now surrounding us are far deeper than is generally perceived, and there is widespread confusion about humanity's place in the world and the environmental issues we are confronting. This book provides a vision of our world that enthusiastically embraces the difficult changes of today as birth pains in the emergence of a global super-organism. It presents a cogent new framework for understanding humanity's relationshiop with the natural world, and is a rebuttal of the voices of gloom that are now so prevalent.