An overview of the semantic Web--an extension of the current Web-- that may act as a "collective memory," augmenting individual brain power and accelerating the pace of human learning and discovery. The author argues for guidance now to "avoid the emergence of a dystopian digital dictator."

Interesting look at how Google's record of search requests can be used to identify and track trends.

An overview of the growing number of sites that allow civillians to zoom in on virtually any corner of the world through browsable satellite imagery.

Short, meandering column about the consciousness-raising impact of wiring ecosystems into the global network via sensors and cameras: "(w)hether it's a happy plant on the office window ledge, or a deeper understanding of how the last few members of a species are clinging to life, directing new capillary sensor networks into ecosystems can bring us real insight into problems that matter."

A group of software developers has released a peer-to-peer virtual aquarium, an experiment in distributed artificial life that is attempting \"to realize the living global digital Gaia: a virtual ocean distributed across machines that span the entire non-virtual world; a community of millions of users all taking part in building this virtual ocean, creating the ecology and the life forms that inhabit it; the life forms seamlessly swimming from one machine to the next...\"

The author surveys the growing number of \'bird-watching\' sites on the internet and argues that their combined effect is \"bringing an explosion of intelligence and even global consciousness to the earth.\" He notes: \"The projects are still embryonic -- perhaps 70,000 people contributed this year. But those numbers are vastly greater than in the days of paper and pen and have been doubling every year. The resulting picture of the natural world is consequently becoming richer and more complex. That\'s not the earth-moving part, however. The earth-moving part -- literally -- is that, as a result, a movement is spontaneously emerging that alters the physical nature of the planet so as to make it more amenable to the birds that are indicator species of global environmental health.\"

Danny Belkin argues that integration of human and machine will lead to an interconnected \"organism\"--the next major evolutionary step forward for humanity.

As the Internet continues to proliferate, it has become natural to think of it biologically as a flourishing ecosystem of computers or a sprawling brain of Pentium-powered neurons. However you mix and match metaphors, it is hard to escape the eerie feeling that an alien presence has fallen to earth, confronting scientists with something new to prod and understand.

The World Wide Web is one thing, but Planet Earth as one big computer? That\'s the startling thesis of Larry Smarr, Professor of Computer Science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Smarr believes exponential growth in computing devices linked via the Internet is leading us, inevitably, down the road to a planetary, integrated computer.

In a move that blends decentralized networks with the massively parallel architecture of supercomputers, several distributed-computing ventures are rapidly developing software and services that will tap the unused resources of Internet-connected PCs to solve computationally intensive tasks. These companies envision massive \"computing grids\" of thousands of computers, collectively a big brain that will be the foundation for a new class of dynamic Net applications.