Gottfried Mayer-Kress and Cathleen Barczys
It is proposed that the existence of a globally and tightly connected network of computer workstations such as the Internet can lead to the emergence of a globally self-organized structure that could be called the Global Brain. Associated with that struct ure would be the capability for higher levels of information processing that could be harnessed to build new kinds of models that would be more rapid and appropriate in their response to ever-changing, nonequilibrium situations. To gain insight into poss ible characteristics of a Global Brain, an examination is made of some functional properties of biological brains and how their functional analog could be manifested in a Global Brain. The implications of a Global Brain for simulation modeling are explor ed and an 8-step process for constructing models that utilize the Global Brain is presented.