There is a TV show, or more precisely a play, on PBS called the World Wide Mind. The pilot takes place in the 22nd Century where some researchers come up with the concept of hooking everyone’s brain to the internet so they can communicate with anyone anywhere on earth. At present this is not technically possible and would require answering a number of the technical challenges, some of which are being looked into right now in hopes of helping physically challenged people. To make the World Wide Mind a reality would require hooking up thousands or even millions of electrodes in the brain. The researchers believe that it would be possible to thread microscopic electrodes into the places they would need to be by way of the capillary system in the brain, i.e. no surgery required.

“This would mean that we could monitor brain activity with such a high degree of resolution that with the appropriate software for analyzing the data, it might become possible to know what a person is thinking or feeling based on their neural activity. And conversely, to “force” the brain to think/feel particular things by sending the appropriate electrical triggers to the neurons. So, the challenges can be summed up as these:

   1. Physical insertion of the electrodes.
   2. Managing enormous amounts of data in real time.
   3. Cracking the neural code of mental activity.
   4. Translating the output of one brain into equivalent input for another brain.
   5. Developing modes of communication with the technology that are superior, or at any rate usefully different, to the ones we have now.”

Where the concept of the worldwide mind may someday be technically possible, I do not believe that it will ever happen. This is because it is based on a faulty assumption. That is - the 18th century assumption that we are separate individuals in ultimate reality, which most Westerns still believe. In other words there is nothing to the world except the physical reality we experience, and therefore psychic communication is impossible.

But in actuality we are not separate. The separateness we see is an illusion, and the big challenge to come is that we learn to use our natural ability to psychically communicate with each other. Quantum theory is very clear that this is possible, and a new meta analysis of all known research into psychic ability says that there is a 1.3x10^104 (1.3 followed by 104 zeros) to 1 chance that psychic ability is in fact real. In other words there is no doubt we have the ability right now to have a worldwide mind. All we need to do is learn to use it.  

O Frank Turner
Author and Speaker
The Science of Spirit: Beyond The Bleep www.ofrank.com