William Gibson and Vannevar Bush

Stumbled across this discussion in William Gibson's blog of Tuesday, January 28, 2003 [IN THE VISEGRIPS OF DR. SATAN (WITH VANNEVAR BUSH)]. William Gibson, for those who don't know is the one who coined the word "cyberspace" and has written a series of novels involving cyberspace. The latest is "Pattern Recognition".

Gibson talks about Vannevar Bush in this blog. His comments reflect a piece I read in "The Futurist" magazine about a decade ago (and I have lost the link to it, so cannot even remember the name of the article). The gist of the article and the core of what Gibson is talking about here is the emergence of a "cyborg" - a human/machine complex.

If the brain is "merely" a highly interconnected set of neurons that gives rise to conciousness and "us"... then if the internet is "merely" a highly interconnected set of human/machine nodes - will this structure give rise to a "new conciousness" - a new "being"?