A very strange thought came to me this evening.
I often think about how famous artists from the sixties used to talk of the collective soul of humanity. How we are “one unified consciousness, a cosmic hive mind living out one life with the illusion of separate bodies.” I’ve always liked that mindset, seeing as how that mode of thinking renders most forms of human stupidity moot. Still, it’s often quite difficult to bring oneself to believe in such a cosmic structuring when the proof of separation is all around us. It’s almost impossible to find one person who believes in one thing in common with you, let alone with all of humanity. However, something came to me tonight that had me thinking along similar lines as the hippies artists of yesteryear.
The thing that made me think this was Twitter.
Yes, little wonderful Twitter. The joy of the internet seeker, and the bane of dictators everywhere. Here was the line of thought that entered my mind:
1) In a collective consciousness, the mechanisms of an individual’s brain would most likely mimic that of any resultant collective entity. Simply put, a collective mind would function in a similar fashion as our individual minds do.
2) If the above thought were true, then there would have to be some sort of mechanism whereby all thoughts of this hive-mind would be accesible by each member of the hive. Much like as in individual, where all their thoughts, to some degree, are public to him or her.
3) All thoughts would be public, and the only reason one “collective thought” would be more visible relative to another would be relevancy and democratic agreement, stemming from the volume of like-minded thoughts.
4) This “rising to the top” of particular thoughts greatly mimics the synaptic process of memory retrieval, at least from my limited personal experience, and the relative separation of the mind into consciousness, sub-conscious, and super-conscious regions.
5) There would need to be a collective focus point for all the individual minds to coalesce into a collective consciousness. Sounds a lot like the internet to me. Only problem with the internet is that not all aspects of it are public. If only there were something that let people share their thoughts in real-time, and all those thoughts were in the public domain. Sounds a lot to me like….
TWITTER!
A large stretch, perhaps, but hear me out. Imagine if everyone on earth had a Twitter, and that everyone tweeted their every waking thought. A terrifying concept, I know, but imagine if all those thoughts could be aggregated, indexed, and their true meaning matched with like-minded tweets in real time. Then imagine that each individual could view and access this “collective discourse”. Millions of thoughts would interconnect like synapses and create “meta-thoughts” based on the collective meaning derived from the indexed thoughts. Ideas would appear out of the ocean of data in the same way that thoughts appear to our conscious minds. People would realize that their thoughts combined to create the collective thoughts of a greater being, and would start to see the great connecting factors that lie dormant within all our minds. I think it would be one of the most fascinating and potentially beautiful things imaginable.
The truly beautiful moment would come when individuals begin speculating about the potential to change these meta-thoughts. Enough people would begin to think the same thing, that the collective consciousness itself would question the possibility of self-alteration. Self-reflective meta-consciousness would be born, and who knows the wonders that something of that magnitude could create. Twitter would become the voice of the collective soul of humanity.
I hope I can live to see something like that happen. It would be the most incredible thing imaginable.
Please voice your opinions on this idea. I’d love to know what others think about social media’s potential to bring humanity closer together.
Mr. David Benson is a social media analyst and coffeephile. He currently lives in New York City and works as an analyst for Mashwork, a social media analytics company. 
2. March 2012 at 1:41 pm
The existence of this thought, to begin with, already starts this collective thinking. It is extremely interesting. by “it:, I mean the whole discovery you seem to have made here. If you really focus on the collective conscious as a whole, it really seems to be the solution.
Today, freedom is almost the new FAD. Voicing your own opinion and standing up for your beliefs seems to be frequently used as an excuse for extreme thought processes that some young people perceive as “just different.” Realistically, it is these individual acts of “creativity” and “being themselves” that induce an extreme separation between social beings.
This is not to be taken with a negative connotation but the collective is not taken advantage of on an sub-conscious or conscious level very often. I see the most obvious examples on a global level, though. Obviously, asian-pacific cultures are known as collectivist cultures because the individuals perceive things as a whole. They look at the “big picture.” I believe this results in faster progress on a social, economical, and educational level (i could go more in depth but…thats for a conversation).
Now, on a psychological level, the collective produces the same results, but it is simply a microcosm.
If this is true, then twitter should be the key to progress. I believe, though, that twitter is too social. If another platform were to be considered, then your idea could manifest theoretically. If you see what linkedIn does in comparison to facebook, then something could be created in the same way in comparison to twitter. a more progressive, professional twitter. The collective conscious could not necessarily be updated in real-time, but if the time comes where it is able to be created, we’re talking about organized thought processes on an accelerated collective brain.
CRAZY.
13. March 2012 at 6:49 pm
An epic comment to an epically strange post. Very much appreciated. If you’d like to continue this conversation via Email, I’d love to keep hashing out this idea with you.
9. December 2012 at 11:40 pm
Really great article. I’ve been searching the web for quite some time now trying to find articles about this type of hive mind or collective consciousness. Twitter does seem like a great platform for this sort of experience, but like you said, something more professional might be needed. For example; a community of profiles in which users are encouraged to post and share intelligent opinions, useful knowledge, or other forms of media. In order to make a contribution, a user must first share two other pieces of information, thus stimulating the flow of thoughts. Perhaps shared “thoughts” could also have a limited lifetime of shares, so modern thoughts prevail.
26. January 2013 at 8:33 pm
Thanks for the comment. Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, but I just realized my spam filters were setup wrong and several comments got lost in the shuffle.
Getting to your point, getting people to share “intelligent” ideas really is the lynch-pin of making something like this work. It’s really interesting to see how people employ the tools available to them. In the case of social media, this leaves something to be desired. I’m not sure why Facebook is so conducive to complaining, or Twitter for snarky quips, but there is something in the medium that seems to bring out less than ideal thoughts.
I still have hope. We’re all learning how to use the incredibly powerful tools of social media for good, and maybe thoughts will mature as the platforms on which they are housed do. We shall see.
I’d be curious to hear more about your thoughts on the subject. If you have a Twitter or care to drop me an email, don’t hesitate to hit me up.
26. January 2013 at 8:33 pm
Thanks for the comment. Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, but I just realized my spam filters were setup wrong and several comments got lost in the shuffle.
Getting to your point, getting people to share “intelligent” ideas really is the lynch-pin of making something like this work. It’s really interesting to see how people employ the tools available to them. In the case of social media, this leaves something to be desired. I’m not sure why Facebook is so conducive to complaining, or Twitter for snarky quips, but there is something in the medium that seems to bring out less than ideal thoughts.
I still have hope. We’re all learning how to use the incredibly powerful tools of social media for good, and maybe thoughts will mature as the platforms on which they are housed do. We shall see.
I’d be curious to hear more about your thoughts on the subject. If you have a Twitter or care to drop me an email, don’t hesitate to hit me up.
24. March 2013 at 2:33 pm
We are attempting to create the very thing you are describing in this article, only on Facebook :]
http://www.facebook.com/wearecollectivelyconscious
Feel free to join the community and contribute whenever you like <3
29. April 2013 at 11:52 pm
I will most definitely check it out. Thanks for reaching out.