Rating: 
Summary: Evolutionary Mechanisms
Review: "What keeps mobs of bacteria, insects, birds, and Jurassic kings and queens from lapsing into anarchy? What so consistently turns groups into social learning machines?" Professor Bloom tells us he has observed five timeless and universal mechanisms: Conformity Enforcers, Diversity Generators, Inner-Judges, Resource Shifters and Intergroup Tournaments. Along the way from the Big Bang to the Internet (his optimistic predictions were unwarranted here), he confirms the fundamental evolutionary role of the archetypal Inner Judge (and, in primates, serotonin levels) and, further, the fundamental role of (typology and) Jung's psychological types (extraversion vs introversion) in shaping human social groups and subcultures. There are only 223 pages of text -- the notes, references and bibliography for all that Bloom so expertly and methodically weaves run 129 pages -- so Global Brain is a much quicker read than you would think.
Rating:
Summary: Another breakthrough work
Review: Bloom has previously turned Darwinism on it's ear with his first book, The Lucifer Principle.
With Global Brain, he continues to "reform" Darwinism, and Wow both the Scientific Community and Laymen with another easily read, entertaining book.
Not everyone will agree with Bloom's theories, but all will agree that he makes some very good points, and causes the reader to think.
That alone is reason enough for me to highly recommend this book. Add his engaging writing style, and the fact that he is a self-taught scientist who has caught the attention of the scientific community by challenging common conceptions, forcing them to rethink their theories, and what you wind up with is a MUST-READ - even if you are NOT scientifically inclined.
Had Einstein been able to write in this style, perhaps many more non-scientists could have understood his Theory of Relativity...
Rating:
Summary: Another breakthrough work
Review: Bloom has previously turned Darwinism on it's ear with his first book, The Lucifer Principle.
With Global Brain, he continues to "reform" Darwinism, and Wow both the Scientific Community and Laymen with another easily read, entertaining book.
Not everyone will agree with Bloom's theories, but all will agree that he makes some very good points, and causes the reader to think.
That alone is reason enough for me to highly recommend this book. Add his engaging writing style, and the fact that he is a self-taught scientist who has caught the attention of the scientific community by challenging common conceptions, forcing them to rethink their theories, and what you wind up with is a MUST-READ - even if you are NOT scientifically inclined.
Had Einstein been able to write in this style, perhaps many more non-scientists could have understood his Theory of Relativity...
Rating: 
Summary: On the evolution of the planetary mind
Review: Harold Bloom's Global Brain is one of those books, like Edward O. Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997), and Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999), that presents the distillation of a lifetime of learning by an original and gifted intellect on the subject of who we are, where we came from, and where we might be going, and presents that knowledge to the reader in an exciting and readable fashion.By the way, the very learned and articulate Howard Bloom (our author) is not to be confused with the also very learned and articulate literary critic Harold Bloom. Bloom's theme is the unrecognized power of group selection, interspecies intelligence, and the dialectic dance down through the ages of what he calls "conformity enforcers" and "diversity generators." These diametrically opposed forces, he argues, actually function as the yin and yang of the body politic, active in all group phenomena from bacteria to street gangs. He is building on the idea that a "complex adaptive system," such as an ant colony or an animal's immune system is itself a collective intelligence. He extends that idea by arguing that a population, whether of humans or bacteria, is a collective intelligence as well. Put another way, intelligence manifests itself as an emergent property of a group. Furthermore, intelligence manifests itself as an emergent property of a collection of interacting groups. This idea is certainly not original with Bloom--indeed it is part of the Zeitgeist of our age--but his delineation of it is the most compelling and thorough that I have read. It runs counter to the prevailing orthodoxy in evolutionary theory. In particular it is in opposition to Richard Dawkins's selfish gene theories and Ernst Mayr's insistence that natural selection operates on individuals not on populations. It is a synthesis of ideas that will, I believe, in the next decade or two, greatly alter the perspective of many of our scientific disciplines. Bloom also posits "inner-judges" which function like biological super-egos; and "resource shifters" which function like neural nets, rewarding those strands of the group that are successful, punishing those that are not. To this he adds the playfully named "intergroup tournaments"; that is, war and other competitions between groups as close as human bands and as diverse as animals and their microbial parasites. Bloom defines these ideas on pages 42-44 and elaborates on them throughout the book with a summary in the final chapter. The key idea that needs emphasis here is that Bloom believes (as I do) that evolution, cultural and biological, operates on groups as well as on individuals--groups of people, groups of animals, groups of microbes--cities, tribes, gangs, herds, species, bacterial colonies and viral masses. He sees all forms of life as interconnected in ways that are not obvious, but discernable if we find the right perspective. Bloom's perspective begins with the physics of the big bang, continues through pre-Cambrian microbial jungle, to the dialectic dance of Sparta and Athens, even to pre-September 11th Afghanistan (perspicaciously, by the way), until he concludes that all life on earth is, and has been, plunging toward an emergent property which might be called Gaia with a planetary brain. Some observations: "Reality is a mass hallucination" (p. 193) or "Reality is a Shared Hallucination" (title of Chapter 8; see also page 2 and page 170). This declaration, expressed somewhat differently, is a tenet of Buddhism, but here Bloom makes the case from a scientific point of view, and he makes it very well. "Humans have been outfoxed...by a collective mind far older and nimbler than any we've developed to this point--the 3.5-billion-year-old global microbial brain." (p. 115) What Bloom is asserting here and throughout the book is that bacteria constitute a superorganism with an intelligence superior to ours that expresses itself through its complex chemistry and tactile behavior. "...[T]he brain we think belongs solely to our kind achieves its goals by tapping the data banks of eagles, wheat, sheep, rodents, grasses, viruses, and lowly E. coli." (p. 220) This dovetails with "We are modules of a planetary mind..." (p. 219) and "the global brain...is a multispecies thing" (p. 216), and the final line in the text, "We are neurons of this planet's interspecies mind." (p. 223) In short, this is one heck of a book. And I'm just talking about the text, which is written in a spirited--sometimes even giddy--style that is infectious and thoroughly engaging. There are 66 pages of footnotes and a 62-page bibliography listing perhaps 500 titles. Some of footnotes contain multiple references, and of course there are errors. It is clear, for example, that human class did not exist 25 million years ago (as is asserted on page 148). When one looks at Bloom's footnote for the assertion, one realizes that he probably meant 25 thousand years ago. The point here is that we shouldn't be put off by all of his references. Those references allow us to check on his facts and gauge his interpretations. And, were any of us to actually read all of the approximately 500 titles he lists, I think we could at the very least apply for our own special ivory tower and some kind of honorary degree. Bottom line: read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Theory of everything need not exist
Review: Howard Bloom's Global brain is a book that explores one pivotal theme, which I felt other reviewers did not hint at. This theme is that of Group Selection versus individual selection, and while he explored the idea of individual selection in the Lucifer Principle, he deals more with the fact that this does not negate a higher fucntioning, that of group selection, and the intriguing thing about group selection is that, as hinted at by Bloom, This group selection is a principle of evolution, and involves ever greater series of organizing principles, thereby leading to the idea of a global brain or consciousness, which immediately leads one into thinking about Quantum physics, and the holographic or illusory properties of perception usually attributed to the brain.And yes, while this book is not a theory of everything, it is a continuation of the Lucifer Principle, it deals with ideas such as the Spatan verus Athens Paradigm, which seems very useful when examining modern societies, as well as how memes function, particular as the species conflicts using ideas, ideas which are utilized by the Global brain to transform the beings on it and to itself evolve into other more complex, as yet unimagined forms. Bloom is excellent at this, and the book itself, as is the purpose I think of a good book, is to stimulate the reader into thinking about such matters, and to have their own ideas about them. I recommend this book to the curious, the wellread, and to the open minded.It is a good, quick, fun read, and it has a great many insights, not all of which are obvious. Check it out.
Rating: 
Summary: Pop science
Review: Howard Blooms "thesis" has been irresponsibly derived from a causal- functional theory of meaning first propounded by Milllikan, Ruth 1984,1986. (not Mr Bloom) These sorts of theories might enable one to say, for example, that a given dance by a given bee meant that there was food in such-and-such quantities in such-and-such a direction at such-and-such a direction from the hive. This would be rendered true roughly because: a) there was some approximate causal law linking linking such dances , occasion by occasion, with dispositions of food sensorily encountered by the bees who performed the dances; and relatedly, because b) such dances have a biologically grounded, information-embodying and transmitting function, in the same sense that the heart has a biologically grounded pumping function. Such theories do not answer what sentience/consciousness is. The simplest example is John Searle's Chinese Room Argument A map of China will do nothing to further understanding unless the individual in the Chinese room counstrues the map as a map. It is one thing to run a program for the interpretation of Chinese sentences, and another to see what one is thereby doing as the interpretation of Chinese sentences. These arguments are from "Mind Brain and The Quantum" by Dr. Michael Lockwood
Rating:
Summary: must read material
Review: i read this book about 4 years ago, and it changed the way i think and analyze everything. it's by far the most important book i have ever read in my entire life. after reading it, i contacted howard blooom because i was so affected. i even went to his apartment in brooklyn one night to chat with him. he is a true genius.
even if you aren't interested in evolution, this book offers so much insight into humans, and systems in general. there is nothing in this book you can argue with. in fact, when i tell people about it, i point out that ONE THIRD of the book is the bibliography - this guy knows his stuff. anyway, this book should not only be read but enthusiastically recommended to every person who is interested in understanding life and reality in general.
Rating: 
Summary: Too technical for the layman
Review: I should start this out by saying Howard Bloom is a genuis, and I am a big fan, but that is what makes this review harder for me to write.
Everything that made The Lucifer Principle great makes Global Brain not so great. The Lucifer Principle was entertaining and easy to read. It was a rare book, one that dealt with complex ideas, but not in a way that was above the average joe. This book read like a school textbook, and one that you would read in grad school to boot.
Another problem was that this book had no clear cut goals, and those it did seemed to similiar to The Lucifer Principle.
Stick with the Lucifer Principle and skip this.
Rating:
Summary: Global Brain
Review: In the follow up to "The Lucifer Principle", Howard Bloom peels away more layers of the onion to show readers the details of how the world really works. Bloom looks into the basic operations of nature, economies, cultures and consciousness and explains the unifying and underlying principles that define the world around and inside us. He continues to discuss the singular nature of our world, and the increasing existence of what he terms the "Global Brain"--a single, intelligent entity composed of the interactions of all life.
Bloom's analysis and detail are impressive. "Global Brain" provides some of the finest examples anywhere illustrating the interconnectedness of man, nature, markets and cultures. He provides a sound proof for his thesis that the natural tendency of life is to always increase in scope and interconnectivity, and he throws in an enlightening look into specific processes of diversification, expansion, communication, judgment and conformity enforcement that hold as true for the natural world as for human economies, societies and psychology.
Unfortunately, Bloom concedes defeat to the whims of his self-titled "super-organism". After providing such an outstanding explanation of how we work within the world around us, he wraps up his book with a rather terse surrender: even though we can understand the world around us we cannot hope to control its processes or its impact on our lives, so we should just accept our fate and carry on. While I found the majority of Bloom's book exceptional, I strongly reject his conclusion. Understanding of the processes and principles on which our world operates is the key to increasing our ability to control and influence the events of our existence. I highly recommend "Global Brain" for its analysis and explanation of these concepts, but I encourage readers to draw their own conclusions. We cannot alter the basic principles of the market, of evolution, or of our own consciousness, but by understanding them and how they control us we can identify how and when we are working against our own best interests--we can remove ourselves from that chain of control.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking
Review: Obviously a lot of research went into this book. This book places the meaning of our existence in its correct perspective. Infinitely next to nothing, but each "almost nothing" plays a role in forming the universe. Excellent reading!
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