Cerebra: “All-Human”, “All-Too-Human”, “All-Too-Transhuman”

Abstract

In thinking the passage from the "all-human cerebrum" (H.G. Wells) to what one might call the contemporary "all-too-human" cerebrum in neo-liberal societies and beyond to the "all-too-transhuman" cerebrum in the cybernetic society, in contrasting Wells's idea of a new world order with the dystopia of the disordering un-world (Nancy in The creation of the world or globalization, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2002/2007), in considering the prospects of a "world brain" faced with the realities of the "global mnemotechnical system" (Bernard Stiegler), in highlighting the differences between the global and authoritarian instrument of "control" in Wells and the descriptions of the control society by Deleuze, and finally, in critiquing the "unifying of the general intelligence services of the world" in Wells (World brain, Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, 1938, pp. 3–4) and the capturing of the "general intellect" (Wark in General intellects: twenty-one thinkers for the twenty-first century. Verso Books, London, 2017), this paper maps the contemporary prospects of the "world brain" against the backdrop of the worldweariness of the present.