Speaking of Global Brains, I just found the weblog of Steven Johnson, author of "Emergent Intelligence". Needless to say, nothing I've suggested has been endorsed by him, not even when I've mentioned him as one of my sources of inspiration. As far as I can see he's always been gently skeptical about the idea of the web and blogs as initial foundation for a Global Brain, not hostile but systematically pointing out differences between the web and systems in which emergent intelligence has been observed. As soon as we fix the last one, whammo! Maybe. At least it's worth a try.