The widespread expansion of the internet is the first step toward global consciousness, provided that the technology is used for communication and common access to the collective knowledge stored in our brains, and not just for downloading pornography faster.

Even before there was an internet, humans have acted to maximize collective knowledge. A free market functions through the input of many buyers and sellers; each individual contributes to a collective outcome, the efficient pricing of goods. Libraries concentrate diverse perspectives and collections of facts so that anyone can dip into the shared pool of knowledge the human race has accumulated, and fish out new connections and inferences. The internet just makes these collective endeavors easier because of speed and virtual storage – compression and miniaturization.

Writing in the 1950s, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin used the term “noosphere” to describe this ever-growing informational layer. It can be defined as the collection of memes, memories, ideas, and knowledge superimposed over the Earth’s biological layer, and it is distinctly human. While it is a big step from efficient transmission, organization, and storage of information to the actual evolution of consciousness – we still do not understand how the phenomenon of consciousness arises uniquely from human brain organization – greater information access is changing the way we understand each other and thus the way we make decisions about our lives. In turn, our lives contribute to and have the potential to enrich the noosphere.

For example, the intimate access to the lives of Iraqi civilians and the American soldiers sent to Iraq – made possible by television and near-instantaneous satellite transmission of images – allows us to empathize with their situations and more accurately and sympathetically weigh the human consequences of the decision to invade, and what next steps we should take. Understanding the Other as not just a faceless datum, but as a fellow human being with similar needs and desires to one’s own, brings all humanity together in what Marshall McLuhan, echoing Teilhard de Chardin, called the “global village.” Decisions will no longer be made just for the benefit of one’s own tribe or village, because the village is expanding to include everyone with whom we have shared experiences.

But the emphasis we place today on information communicable via electric signals de-emphasizes the most personal aspects of what it means to be human: direct physical interaction between our bodies and the environment, which includes other human beings. McLuhan wrote that media becomes an extension of our selves; but until the day we exchange our frail, analog, biological shells for something more permanent, digital, and virtual, we remain rooted to physical realities. No matter how fast we can order widgets from China, we still need to eat, sleep, exercise, and interact with other humans.

To improve society’s information infrastructure without improving its physical infrastructure is akin to an individual sitting in front of a computer all day without ever exercising. Indeed, this is exactly what happens to many individuals because of our lack of attention to physical infrastructure. Our daily commute takes place on a grid of straight lines, everyone looking directly ahead and moving at maximum allowable velocity, with no thought given to surroundings or other commuters or, indeed, to anything except our destinations. Once there, we work or eat or shop by one-dimensional transaction – cha-ching! we’re done and we leave, on to complete the next transaction, or perhaps to return to our personal box, which we stuff with our own unique combination of Scandinavian furniture.

Ironically, in coming together to cooperate against the forces of nature, humanity has turned that cooperation into an impersonal, invisible network. Instead of the communal cave dwelling in which the first humans shared food, warmth, and stories, we have used technology to give every person their own cave: lonely, cold, and ultimately empty.

Italian architect Paolo Soleri would argue that this is due to poor design. The undeniable value in the density provided by cities – more profitable economics, the critical mass that allows art to thrive in a multitude of microenvironments, finding that rare oboist who does not sound like a dying duck – does not necessitate dehumanization of its inhabitants.

What is needed, as Soleri demonstrates in his book Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, is for humanity to design cities consonant with the mental hyperorganism humanity has already begun to build through interaction and information technology. If the sum of human activity amounts to an Earth-spanning mind then that mind must be enhanced by an efficient reorganization of how its physical constituents interact.

If each human in society’s hypermind can be likened to a single neuron in a human brain, it’s not hard to see that our current physical layout is inefficient. There are 100 billion neurons in a human brain; if these were to be arrayed in two dimensions, the distances between neurons in adjacent sections would become prohibitively large. Signals would take more time to travel, and more energy would have to be spent in growing neurons long enough to make synaptic connections. Evolution has solved this problem by arranging brains in three dimensions, minimizing the average distance between any given pair of neurons.

Yet cities and especially suburbs are based on two-dimensional expansion. Like an outward-growing bacterial colony, vital growth occurs at the edges, leaving the center to decay. While it is true that skyscrapers in cities make use of three dimensions to increase density, in most cases, these colossal buildings are zoned for a single use; a commercial tower draws its commuters from diverse residential towers, and isolation of individuals still occurs. Just ask any New Yorker whether Manhattan’s skyscrapers help its inhabitants feel a greater sense of community.

Suburbs (from which people commute to the city) and exurbs (suburbs where people both live and work) are emblematic of the two-dimensional affliction. Around half of suburban two-dimensional space is devoted to roads, parking lots, and other car-related infrastructure, akin to the energy and space needed to grow long neuronal connections in the hypothetical two-dimensional brain.

Soleri’s evolutionary next step is the arcology (from architecture + ecology). It is a city designed to be three-dimensional, roadless and carless within the city boundaries, organic, in harmony with the landscape and environment, with its inhabitants’ well-being as a goal, rather than the exigencies of commercial (read: money-making) functions, and residents’ well-being only an afterthought.

Praxis comes in the form of Arcosanti, a community in the Arizona desert. Soleri’s arcology prototype, it is designed to eventually house 1500, although only 50 to 100 live there at any time today. Arcosanti’s website stresses that it is not a commune, and it is not a cult; any resident is free to leave at any time. But residents must certainly adopt a shift in mindset, since the whole point of an arcology is to allow inhabitants to be part of something larger than themselves in a very practical, everyday manner.

While everyone in an arcology would have their own jobs, bedrooms, hobbies, and talents (just as in regular urban life), the shared spaces in arcology become much more important. Walking from place to place (never more than 20 minutes away) becomes an act of community. Maintaining the many shared spaces becomes a means not only of personal fulfillment, but of contribution to one’s neighbors. Construction projects again take on the community aspect of a barn-raising.

Most importantly, living in a more closely shared space allows understanding of our fellow human’s experiences to be more real. No matter how much we may read in the newspaper or see on television, the best way to learn about your neighbor is to live the way your neighbor does. The vision of Arcosanti is that an urban environment may be designed to maximize the beneficial personal aspects of human contact and interaction, as opposed to primarily fiduciary interests.

Only 5% complete after over thirty years of existence, Arcosanti has a long way to go to become a functional prototype. And there are many problems to work out. Unknown, for example is whether the open land surrounding Arcosanti is sufficient to feed 1500 inhabitants, or whether food would have to be imported – the inhabitants producing something else of value to be exported. Unclear is what will happen to the vision of Arcosanti when the architect himself, over 80 years of age, is gone. It is also impossible to predict whether there will be a spurt of interest that will build into critical mass, pushing Arcosanti past the threshold of hyperorganism.

It might even seem that the only way to build an arcology is from the top down, with a major initial investment of capital. Some philanthropist like George Soros or a calculating real estate mogul like Donald Trump might be convinced that Soleri’s vision has value, not only for inhabitants, but for investors’ pocketbooks. But Arcosanti must first work as example, and as “urban laboratory,” in order to convince anyone that its vision of humans coming together as a hyperorganism is not a wishful fancy.

And even if Arcosanti is not yet completed, it will always exist as a refuge for those who have not yet yielded to the dehumanization of sub/ex/urban life, for those who yearn to produce something physical and tangible that will last beyond one’s own mortal life and perhaps be a source of joy and bonding to many who live on afterwards, and for those who want to live in and build communities that are more than just occasional conveniences. Arcology, by more efficient organization of our physical environments, could be what allows humanity to make an evolutionary transition to a true global consciousness.