The new nervous system of mankind

“What we are building now is the nervous system of mankind, which will link together the whole human race, for better or worse, in a unity which no earlier age could have imagined.”

– Arthur C. Clarke, “The Social Consequences of Communications Satellites,” paper presented at the 12th International Astronautical Congress, Washington, DC, 1961, and published in Arthur C. Clarke, Voices from the Sky: Previews of the Coming Space Age (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 139.

The great scientific fiction writer wrote this long before the advent of the Internet…

But is the unity of all humankind any closer as a result of the globalization of this new “nervous system”?  For better or worse, he said.

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