Just as Homo Sapiens (humans in tribes, hunting and gathering) evolved into Homo Economicus (humans as  a whole ecosystem, using money to decide who exploits which niche), we have evolved again.

We are now _Homo Connectus:  _Humans as one hive-mind organisation, with the knowledge of the entire civilisation available to each of us.  

Yes, I’m talking about the smartphone in your pocket.  Twitter.  Facebook.  Blogs.   24-Hour Rolling News.  It’s truly exhilarating to have watched this change unfold during my lifetime.    

For the first time, the whole planet is waking up as a collective consciousness. 

Or perhaps it shouldn’t be waking up – more like, being born.   We’re in the early years of learning to talk to one another, discovering the thoughts of everyone else, getting to grips with different viewpoints and opinions on an unprecedented scale.

We are only just beginning to learn to organise discourse.   Reddit, for example, is a site which allows anyone to create a category.  Then, within that category, discussions happen.   (Hacker News does the same thing for a single category).

We have issues with trolls, and confidence tricksters and fishing, and bullying and baiting.

Different viewpoints on things like racism, sexism, humour, politics cause vast amounts of discussion.  Not much of this is useful.  We need ways in which we can organise discussions better than a temporally-threaded web-page.   We need artificial intelligence to help us do this.   Actually, before that, we need systems that help us do this.

It’s really early days.  We’re at the level of infant-school playground right now.  But, we need new tools and techniques to help us get through the Eternal September.