In the Circuits of Mind
The role of screens in humanity’s transition to networked cognition
What if the environment we now inhabit – the screens, the devices, the information flows – is not merely a set of tools but the substrate of a new kind of intelligence? For most people alive today, the idea of life without screens is not simply foreign but nearly unintelligible. These devices – smartphones, laptops, watches, glasses, headphones – have ceased to be accessories. They are the medium through which existence is conducted. In this respect, humanity may already be enmeshed in something larger than itself: a system that functions, in important respects, like a brain distributed across billions of humans and machines.
Everything of significance now passes through these interfaces. Work, education, politics, finance, even intimate social interaction – all mediated by screens. This pervasiveness is not accidental. Entire populations can be shaped through the calibrated delivery of information. At the same time, individuals are incentivised to increase the bandwidth of their engagement: faster updates, richer media, immersive environments. Reward mechanisms are engaged to sustain participation, and corporations optimise these dynamics further. A feedback loop emerges: users demand more; systems adapt; bandwidth grows; dependence deepens. As dependence deepens, the asymmetry sharpens. The network can redirect, restructure, and adapt, while individuals become increasingly reliant on it to orient themselves in reality.
The trajectory is patterned. Computation began with simple calculators, then vacuum tubes, transistors, and integrated circuits. Microprocessors enabled personal computing. Networks enabled information sharing. The internet globalised communication. Machine learning allowed adaptive, personalised influence. At each stage, computation became not only faster but more tightly interwoven with human life. The arc points toward a deeper coupling between human cognition and computational systems.
This development has analogues in biological evolution. Inorganic molecules combined into organic compounds. Organic molecules became self-replicating cells. Prokaryotes merged into eukaryotes. Single-celled organisms formed multicellular organisms. Multicellular organisms aggregated into societies. Each stage marked a transition to a higher level of organisation – systems that were more complex, resilient, and capable than their components. Humanity now appears poised for another such transition: from isolated organisms to integrated networks.
Nature already provides models of distributed cognition. Ant colonies achieve feats of coordination without central command. Slime moulds navigate mazes and optimise pathways through chemical signalling. Mycelial fungal networks distribute nutrients across forests, linking trees into ecological webs. Intelligence, in these cases, arises not from a single locus but from information flows across many nodes. Humanity appears to be replicating this principle at planetary scale, with the added complexity that its nodes are conscious beings tethered to digital systems.
This trajectory does not require the elimination of consciousness. Indeed, consciousness persists because the system has found it useful. Humans retain the subjective experience of autonomy, but their decisions are increasingly shaped by algorithmic currents. Conscious agents remain, even flourish, but their behaviours are subtly aligned with the growth and stability of the larger system.
The accelerants of this process have been technological. Silicon chips enabled exponential growth in processing power. Networks linked processors into webs. Smartphones made the connection constant. Wearables extended it further, embedding the network into the rhythms of daily life. Figures like Steve Jobs symbolise catalytic moments. The iPhone was not simply a device but a decisive compression of multiple trajectories – communication, computation, and identity fused into one. In collapsing the distance between human cognition and systemic information flows, it bound individuals to the network with unprecedented immediacy.
Seen in this light, society itself resembles an information-processing architecture. Legal systems function like OR gates: multiple interpretations enter, but only one outcome is codified. Markets function like AND gates: a transaction occurs only when both parties align. These mechanisms aggregate distributed inputs into coherent outputs. They are not mere institutions but computational structures – organs of collective processing – that translate scattered human activity into systemic action.
A more conspiratorial perspective presses further. Do we truly remember a time before screens? Human memory is malleable, prone to distortion and reconstruction. Perhaps the narrative of gradual technological invention is not as straightforward as it appears. Perhaps screens were never merely tools but instruments – mechanisms designed, from the outset, to shape behaviour and maintain cohesion.
What seems clear is that humanity is entering a stage where networks of conscious agents act as higher-order processing systems. We are not mere cogs, yet neither are we fully autonomous. Our decisions are increasingly entangled with algorithmic infrastructures that shape, constrain, and direct them. The emergent system does not thrive by eliminating consciousness but by incorporating it – aligning the complexity of awareness with the requirements of a larger organisational whole.
We are not approaching this threshold – we are already inside it. The distributed brain we inhabit is planetary and computational. Screens are not windows into this brain but neurons within it. To recognise this is to see that evolution has not stopped at the level of individuals. It continues, through us, into something larger. The unresolved question is whether we will perceive this transition clearly enough to influence it – or whether it will proceed without our deliberate understanding, leaving us as participants in a system we can experience but never fully comprehend.
Are you familiar with the term Noosphere?