Francis Heylighen , AI researcher from the Vrije University, Brussels, and Johan Bollen from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico recently started building a Web system called the Principia Cybernetica Web that continually rebuilds the links between its pages, adapting them to users' interests and actions. The idea behind this project is that Web links are similar to associations in the brain, as supported by synapses connecting neurons. The "strength" of the links can change depending on the frequency of use of each link, allowing the network to learn from the way it is used. System can construct new hyperlinks when it seems appropriate, and erase old links that aren't used much.

Conceptually, Heylighen's and Bollen's "global brain" follows the principles postulated in one of the most influential works in connectionism's history, a book titled "The Organization of Behaviour", written by Canadian neurophysiologist Donald O. Hebb. Hebbian learning was probably one of the first physiologically plausible methods to change the weights of artificial neural network. In its most simplest form it states that the weight that connects two neurons should be reinforced if both neurons fire, or have the same activation at the same time. More recently it was generalized by adding the rule that the weight should be weakened if both neurons have different activations at the same time. Using these principles on the Web results in directed graphs that can be enhanced with weights (usually measuring the frequency of usage) and semantic link types, and reorganized in order to provide better access to the knowledge that it contains. As a first step towards the global brain, this research is inspired by the theoretical concepts and principles from cybernetics, complexity, cognition, evolution and self-organization.

The mechanism behind the Principia Cybernetica Web is rather simple, as it uses cookies to identify usage patterns and user's routes through the site. An interesting article published recently by the New Scientist magazine describes it in more detail, while discussing more scary, "Big Brother" or "Matrix" - like aspects. Advanced readers will appreciate an excellent collection of references that explore the idea of the emerging planetary organism and global brain in more depth. Other approaches, like Luis Rocha's Active Recommendation Systems for the Library Without Walls and various collaborative filtering systems are also described.

Another innovative approach is taken by Intelligenesis, a New York based company led by cognitive and computer scientist Ben Goertzel. Their WebMind software is complex, self-organizing system, the goal of which is to understand data stored on computer networks, create its own information using this data as a starting-point, and answer questions regarding this information. It doesn't aim to emulate human intelligence in an artificial way, but it works the same way as the human brain, allowing collections of data to self-organize and recognize patterns. The long-term vision underlying Webmind is that of the world's total computing power as a single global brain, realized as a distributed, self-organizing network of Java processes. More info can be found in one of our previous articles, or following the links listed above.

As Dr. Goertzel says, the change which is about to come upon us as a consequence of the emergence of the global Web mind will be a very large one, comparable in scope to the emergence of tools, language, or civilization.