My understanding of this as a non-scientist (so I might have some company) is that, when Cadell says Now, I have read Arthur C. Clark's Childhood's End where Clark imagines that the manifest destiny of the DNA is to evolve into a Global Brain kind of consciousness. I know that Cadell has not, so he might mean something else altogether. Maybe when he gets time he can clarify this for me.certain binary star systems may be artifacts of intelligent agency
he means that certain binary star systems have evolved over millennia to become an intelligent agency. Is that your understanding of the statement tng?
Well the idea that I discussed in great depth with clemvidal at the Global Brain Institute is that there is a natural system-level pattern for intelligence that follows the Kardashev scale and Barrow scale. If this is accurate then intelligence gradually acquires more and more energy from its star system. This leads to intelligence turning their host planet into an extreme dense supercomputer that can directly control the energy of its parent star. This would result in a "binary star" system whereby the planet's density would be analogous to that of a white dwarf or eventually a neutron star. These would be "super global brains". So within this framework we are heading towards a global brain, but then once we are a global brain we will continue development further by acquiring more and more energy and inventing smaller and more efficient computers until we have completely transformed Earth into a "post-planet" (my term). Eventually we will create such a dense magnetic field that we will directly "feed" off of the Sun (i.e. becoming a starivore) until we have accumulated a massive accretion disc of the Sun's energy around our post planet. This would be a super global brain. It's possible that this is the natural trajectory of high intelligence - but of course we don't know yet - which is why I stated in my article about this that it is philosophy and not science. We need to develop a way to test the idea - and then it would be science.
I guess I like that ... now. At 10? Not so much. And the way Clarke portrays the emotional trauma of the process, coupled with the melancholy of the ending, doesn't leave me with an upbeat, mindmeld is the best meld attitude. But I didn't like Asimov's take on Gaia either -- did you read that? -- so maybe I just subconsciously find the concept unsettling.