It's the Noosphere, Not the Metaverse

Yes the word Metaverse has a definition that is grounded in computer simulation and virtual and gaming worlds It could only be a name for the future that a coder or gamer might use but humanity is a much larger data setWhile coders gamers programmers AR and VR geeks and computer nerds might relish the term Metaverse it is way too restrictive Futurists evolutionary biologists and integral spiritualists all understand that where we are headed is a much bigger place A place of geological biological humanistic technological mental and spiritual integrationHumanityamp8217s next reality next media next truly connected world and place of neurological connectedness is a much more massive next step in human evolutionNoosphere EvolutionshiftThe first manuscript of what became my first book The Shift Age was titled Evolutionshift In the early part of this century that name didnamp8217t seem to resonate with publishers or almost anyone else So I changed the name of the book but have used that name for my blog my YouTube channel and my handle on TwitterWhy Shortly after my first book came out and I had fully started my career as a fulltime professional futurist I read The Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de Chardin It blew me away Here was a magnificently written vision of the future written by a man who died shortly before I was born and whose vision while similar was a loftier more spiritual one than mine As one who has primarily spoken to business groups and got the nickname quotthe CEO39s futuristquot I felt that the profound spiritual message of de Chardinamp8217s Noosphere might be a bit too far So I altered the name and started to speak and write about the Neurosphere making up terms is one of the things we futurists do the rapidly increasing synaptic technological interconnectedness of humanity It was a more understandable and accessible name as it described the growing Internet as a nervous systemIn recent columns here I have acknowledged that reading McLuhan Toffler and Fuller are foundational to my thinking and in fact part of the pathway to becoming a futurist To these names I add Teilhard de Chardin the great philosopherpaleontologistJesuit priest who lived and wrote in the first half of the 20th centuryTeilhard de Chardin was a renaissance man He was a Jesuit priest and great paleontologist He codiscovered the celebrated quotPeking Manquot fossils Then he wrote The Phenomenon of Man named quotthe best spiritual book of the 20th Centuryquot He died in 1955 so it was only after his death that the Jesuits allowed his books to be published posthumously A Jesuit priest who though he couldnamp8217t possibly have named the Internet foresaw it coming into existence As I said reading him blew me awayThe Noosphere is the next evolutionary step for planet Earth First there was the geological then the biological then the human population explosion and the resulting technology we created The geosphere came first with the physical planet The biosphere came second living off the natural resources of the geosphere The third stage is the Noosphere We are on a rapid approachInstead of this computer and codeconstrained Metaverse we are at the beginning of the NoosphereI have yet to speak with a futurist thought leader or CEO who is comfortable with the term Metaverse It feels as though MSM Mainstream Media and the blogosphere are using the term somewhat mindlessly and without understanding insight or passionThe terms Evolutionshift and Noosphere are different but similar in the vision of the next big evolutionary step for the planet and humanity Through the coming weeks I will explore where we are the beginning of the NoosphereNoosphere Definitions and NotationsThe sphere of human consciousness and mental activity especially in regard to its influence on the biosphere and in relation to evolution MerriamWebsterThe biosphere including and modified by such human activities as agriculture forestry animal husbandry urbanization and industrialization DictionarycomThe Noosphere alternate spelling Noamp246sphere is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the RussianUkrainian Soviet biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and the French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Vernadsky defined the Noosphere as the new state of the biosphere1 and described as the planetary quotsphere of reasonquot23 The Noosphere represents the highest stage of biospheric development that of humankind39s rational activities4The word is derived from the Greek amp957amp972amp959amp962 quotmindquot quotreasonquot and amp963amp966amp945amp8150amp961amp945 quotspherequot in lexical analogy to quotatmospherequot and quotbiospherequot5 The concept cannot be accredited to a single author The founding authors Vernadsky and de Chardin developed two related but starkly different concepts the former grounded in the geological sciences and the latter in theology Both conceptions of the noosphere share the common thesis that together human reason and the scientific thought has created and will continue to create the next evolutionary geological layerIn the theory of Vernadsky the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth after the geosphere inanimate matter and the biosphere biological life Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists or the promoters of cyberspace Vernadsky39s noosphere emerges at the point where humankind through the mastery of nuclear processes begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements It is a study area of the Global Consciousness Project19For de Chardin the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the Earth As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness This concept extends Teilhard39s Law of ComplexityConsciousness the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe Teilhard argued the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification culminating in the Omega Point an apex of thoughtconsciousness which he saw as the goal of history WikipediaThe Noosphere is the sphere of thought enveloping the Earth The word comes from the Greek noos mind and sphaira sphere The Noosphere is the third stage of Earthamp8217s development after the geosphere think rocks water and air and the biosphere all the living things The three spheres build on each other For example life in the biosphere needs the geosphere to survive matter water and air and thinking needs to be embodied in the biosphere via the living brains of human beings and our technology So the Noosphere can be seen as the rise of a planetary superorganism integrating all geological biological human and technological activities into a new level of planetary functioning HumanEnergyioSelfpublished at MediaVillage through the wwwAvrioB2Bcom platformClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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It's the Noosphere, Not the Metaverse

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David Houle

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