This paper published in the January 2012 Hawaii WDSI management and Operations Research Conference

Feng Liu,ResearchCenterfor Virtual Economy and Digital Sciences,ChinaAcademyofSciences,Beijing100190,China

                           Yue “Jeff” Zhang, California State University, Northridge, USA

Abstract

The Theory of Evolution by Darwin revealed the law of evolution of lives, from primitive to advanced, from simple to complex. Similar evolution can also be seen on the Internet: the four decades of the Internet show that the Internet’s development is not orderless. Instead, through the analogy and contrast between the Internet and human brain structure, evidences show that the evolution of the Internet is highly resembling that of human brains. Enlightened by neurology, we plotted the “virtual brain structure” for the Internet. We found that the Internet has the tendency of infinite expansion and growth, and have come to the conclusion that the Internet will eventually extend to the whole universe. According to the research, we have formed a roadmap of evolution from the origin of life to the Intelligent Universe

Introduction

 

From the review and examination of the history of the Internet, we have found that the structure of the Internet has strong resemblance to that of human brain. We proposed a structure of the Internet Virtual Brain, and plotted six illustrations of evolution of the Internet, from a primitive one evolved to a mature one.

On the special dimension, on the other hand, we noted that the Internet has the tendency of infinite expansion and growth, from the laboratory prototype to national internetwork, intercontinental network, and, through moon explorer and Mars explorer, expanding to outer space. We thus speculate that as time passes, the Internet will expand from the Earth to the whole Solar System, further to the Milky Way galaxy, eventually to the whole universe. This universe that is connected and covered by the Internet is what we call the “intelligent universe” or “the universe as a brain.” We created five figures to illustrate the expansion of the Internet from the Earth to the whole universe.

The Darwinian has proved the process of evolution from the single-cell microbody to human. However, the evolution after human life is still unknown. We attempted to combine the evolution of lives and the evolution of the Internet, to form a roadmap of evolution from the origin of life to the Intelligent Universe. This roadmap will be illustrated in Section 4.

1. The Origin of Life, and the Theory of Evolution

In 1859, C.R. Darwin published his revolutionary book The Origin of Lives, in which he argued that all lives on the Earth evolved from a common ancestor; lives have biological relations.Darwin proposed selection of the nature to explain the cause of evolution, thus established a scientific theory of evolution, revealing the law of the development of lives [1].

The commonly held scientific belief is that the lives on the Earth evolved following such roadmap: from the most primitive non-cell organism, evolved to prokaryotes with cell structure, from prokaryotes with cell structure to Single-celled eukaryotes, and then follow different directions of evolution, there appeared fungi, vegetable kingdom, and animal kingdom. In the animal kingdom, the evolution manifested from the primitive flagellate to multi-cell animal, to chordate, and further to vertebrates. The fishes in the vertebrates evolved to amphibian, then to reptiles, which branched to mammals and birds. A branch of mammals further evolved to one that has high level of intelligence, which is human[2].

We will borrow the scientific illustration of the evolution from the primitive non-cell structure to human, to be the first part of our evolution roadmap from the origin of life to the intelligent universe

2.The Birth of the Internet, to the Formation of the Internet Brain

The Internet was born in 1969 as APARNET, a computer internetwork by the Advanced Research Project Agency (APAR) of the of the U.S. Department of Defense. The applications on the Internet developed from simple forms in the early days such as ftp, electronic mail, electronic BBS, developed to the rich forms of today, such as  electronic commerce, blogs, wikis, social networks, search engines, instant messaging, and video streaming. Although the original purpose of the Internet (APARNET) was to facilitate the connections and the communications among computers, the great significance of the Internet proved to be way beyond such original intention[3].

Looking back to the evolution history of human, it is a history of the extension of human sensing and motion organs. Stick extended arms, stone extended fist, car and train extended legs, telescope and microscope extended eyes, drums, trumpets, and telephone lines extendedear and mouth in signal transmission. The highway networks, railway networks, airlines networks, and ocean liner networks eventually realized the networking of human limbs.

At the same time, the extension of human brain never stood still either. Knot-tying, counting rod, abacus are all examples of early day computing tools that extend the human brain. In1753, almost at the beginning of the industrial revolution, an author known as “C.M” described on The Scottish the structure of his “electric communication machine.” In 1837, Cook, an English, made the first major step in telecommunications with his telegraph. Bell’s telephone in 1876 basically laid the ground for today’s internetworking. Then the electronic computer born in the US in 1946 substantially extended human brain. And then in the 1950s there came the communications among computers – the digital communications[3]

It took the mankind two hundred years to make preparations for internetworking. In 1969, ARPANET connected four computers for the first time, and then the Internet took off from the original military-oriented ARPANET to today’s Internet with millions of servers and countless applications and services. The forty years since the ARPANET, there emerged desktop computers, laptop computers, and smart phones, everyone of which increased the time human brain connected to the Internet. The information and knowledge inside human brain constantly interacts with those on the Internet. The history of the Internet indicates that the Internet is not only the internetworking of computers, but rather for the connection of human brains through internetworking of computers .

If the fundamental function of the Internet is to connect human brains rather than only computers, the this connection itself should have a structure relevant and similar to that of what it connects – the human brain. Observing the Internet’s development since 1969, we noticed this similarity with more and more evidence[4].

 

From the 1990s, video cameras connected with the Internet had started to be used in homes, factories, and public places such as intersections and squares. In 2007, Google launched the street view service, through which Internet users in Asia or Europe can view city views of Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, or New York. This new system is to the Internet as vision and hearing systems are to the human nerve system[5]

Also in the 1990s, sensors placed in soil, air, bridges, building began to be connected to the Internet, sending data to monitors through the Internet. In 2006, the water resources management of China began to place sensors in soil, rivers, and air, transmitted data of temperature, humidity, wind speed to data processing center through the Internet, for analysis to support decisions regarding flood/drought prevention and response. Since 2009, the Internet of Things featuring networks of sensors began to take off world wide. These networks are similar to the Somatosensory  nerve systems in human brain[6].

Since 1980s, the control of a remote printer or copier through LAN or MAN (metropolitan area network) emerged. In the first ten years of the 21st century, it is not uncommon to see cases in which doctors perform surgery through networks from distance. These applications of controlling machines or equipments from a distance are similar to the motion nerve system in human brain [7].

In October 2007, Google and IBM began to extend their cloud computing programs in university campuses, including Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and University of Maryland. In cloud computing, the software traditionally installed on PCs – such as office, gaming, security, and financial software – are residing in and running from giant servers on the Internet. Numerous users obtain the services provided by these gigantic servers through simpler clients (as compared to full-fledged stations). At the same time the data captured by the “vision,” “hearing,” “body sensing,” and “motion”“nerve systems” are all transmitted  to cloud servers, where they are processed and searched/queried. The cloud computing is very similar to the central verve system in human brain[8]

It is enlightened by these evidences, we developed the following illustration for the “virtual brain of the Internet”[9](Figure 1):

 

The above figure was later further developed into a new one that emphasized the triple-layer structure of the central nerve system of the Internet ”[10](Figure 2):

The evolution of the Internet from the original four connected computers to the eventually complete “virtual brain of the Internet” is not achieved in one strike. Instead it is a gradual and evolutional process. Based on the development of the Internet, we plotted six figures as the second part of the evolution roadmap from the origin of life to the intelligent universe.

3.The Internet’s Spatial Growth from Laboratory to Intelligent Universe

October 29, 1969, the computers at Stanford and UCLA connected for the first time, which was the prototype of the Internet. Since that point, in 42 years, the Internet expanded from theU.S.to covering theAmericas, Europe, andAsia. All continents are now completely covered by the Internet.

The Internet’s expansion is not limited to the Earth: every step of mankind’s exploration into the outer space marks the expansion of the boundary of the Internet: the moon explorer, the Mars explorer, or the deep space explorers Voyager I and II, all pushed forward the boundary of the Internet to the “Interplanet.”  We can reasonably speculate that as the evolution of mankind, the Internet will certainly expand to the further dep space. Given time, the development of mankind will expand the Internet to cover the Milky Way galaxy, and in an infinite time, eventually expand to the whole universe. We discussed in Second 2 that the structure and functions of the Internet will be similar to those of the human brain; therefore, a Solar system, a Milky Way galaxy, and a universe that is connected by the Internet can be referred to as intelligent Solar system, intelligentMilkyt Waygalaxy, and intelligent universe (“Universe Brain”).

We will use five figure to depict the expansion of the Internet from intercontinental to intelligent universe, as the third part of the roadmap from the origin of life to the intelligent universe.

4 The roadmap from the origin of life to the intelligent universe

Sequence number	Figure	Remarks
1		The origin of life (figure fromthe Internet)
2		The age of bacteria and blue algae(figure from the Internet)
3		The age of trilobite; explosion of lives (figure from the Internet)
4		The age of fishes(figure from the Internet)
5		The age of amphibians (figure from the Internet)
6		The age of dinosaurs and reptiles (figure from the Internet)
7		The age of mammals (figure from the Internet)
8		The age of evolution of man (figure from the Internet)
9		1969, Internet was born; mankind entered the Internet Age
10		1969-1983: The Internet had only a few functions
11		Since BBS’birth in 1978,its functions span off and there emerged many new services such as news, e-commerce, blogs, wikis.
12		The spin-offs of BBS combined with other early applications of the Internet
13		Internet applications further merged and synthesized, forming the “quasi-neuron” structure based on personal (Internet) space
14		As the emerge of the Internet of Things and with cloud computing, the virtual brain structure of the Internet is taking form
15		The virtual brain of the Internet that covers all continents (figure from the Internet)
16		The virtual brain of the Internet that covers the whole Earth (figure from the Internet)
17		The virtual brain of the Internet that covers the whole Solar system; it can be referred to as “intelligent Solar System” or the “Solar System Brain” (figure from the Internet)
18		The virtual brain of the Internet that covers the whole Milky Way galaxy; it can be referred to as “intelligent Milky Way” or the “Milky Way Brain” (figure from the Internet)
19		The virtual brain of the Internet that covers the whole Universe; it can be referred to as “intelligent Universe” or the “Universe Brain” (figure from the Internet)

 

 

5.Conclusion

Through the examination and organization of the development history of the Internet, this study developed and described the roadmap of evolution from the origin of life to the Intelligent Universe. It has the following significance:

1. Filled in the blank of the Darwinian after the evolution reached the human.

 2. Established a model for the future of the Internet, and provided a foundation for future scientific research and commercial applications/extensions.

3. Through the proposed model of the Intelligent Universe, pointed out the direction of the evolution of lives.

Although this study pointed out the ultimate result of the evolution of the Internet is the Intelligent Universe, or the Universe Brain, there are still three issues that need to be explored and addressed:

1. How will the Intelligent Universe overcome the constraints of time and space in its operation?

2. What would be the direction of the next stage of evolution for the Intelligent Universe?

3. What could be the factors pushing forward the lived toward the direction of the Intelligent Universe?