From Muscle Man to Network Man

When we look at the history of humanity, it becomes clear that human societies have developed through several major phases. Each phase not only introduced new technologies, but also fundamentally changed how people lived, cooperated and organised themselves.

The first major phase was that of nomadic humanity. Small groups of hunter-gatherers moved across the landscape in direct dependence on nature and climate. Human existence revolved almost entirely around physical survival. The brain, as with all animals, essentially functioned in support of the body: helping to find food, avoid danger and secure reproduction.

This was followed by the agricultural phase. People settled permanently because this offered better chances of survival than continuing to roam. In doing so, they developed property, religion, hierarchy and eventually cities and states. Within each region, local cultures, languages and religions emerged that strongly connected people within their own communities. Societies became more stable, but also more strongly organised around territory, power and physical production. This laid the foundation for the “frozen structures of the nation state”: large national “ice blocks” within which people largely functioned inside their own country, language and culture. Precisely because of these local cultures, religions and languages, the foundations were also laid for regional conflicts and wars.

The industrial revolution subsequently gave rise to the modern nation state. Factories, mass production and bureaucracy became the dominant societal model. People were largely organised within national economies, national identities and fixed institutional structures. At the same time, the first major multinational corporations emerged, operating globally and thereby partially escaping the more rigid structures of the nation state while simultaneously developing a more international culture among their employees.

Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a new phase transition: the transition towards the digital society. Thanks to the internet, smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence, people around the world are becoming permanently connected. Work, knowledge, creativity and cooperation are becoming less and less tied to physical location or national borders. Humanity is gradually developing a global network layer on top of the classical nation states.

This may also fundamentally change the role of human beings themselves, as well as their perception of reality. For millions of years, our brains primarily served to keep the body alive. But within the digital society, this relationship appears to be slowly reversing. More and more human activity no longer revolves around physical survival, but around information, knowledge, creativity, communication and cognitive cooperation. Increasingly, the body serves to support the functioning of the brain.

Modern humans therefore live simultaneously in two worlds: physically local, yet cognitively global.

An individual can possess multiple identities at the same time: Dutch citizen, programmer, nature lover, artist, gamer or climate activist. People are organising themselves less through geography alone and increasingly through fields of knowledge, shared interests and digital networks. We are therefore witnessing not merely a technological transformation, but a new phase in the evolution of human organisation: a transition from industrial man to network man. A transition from nation states towards global knowledge-based networks.

Politicians increasingly argue that we should move away from globalisation and that the world should once again be divided into dominant geopolitical blocs centred around powers such as China, Russia, Europe and the United States. In reality, however, this is outdated thinking. The collaborative networks between scientists, social groups, globally operating companies and artists have already become deeply globalised. These connections can no longer be forced back into traditional regional structures by politicians. Quite simply, this will no longer be accepted. Humanity is shifting from territorial industrial structures towards global cognitive network structures.

The major question of the coming decades is therefore not merely which technologies we develop or how we control them, but above all: what new forms of global cooperation will emerge? Which political systems will be capable of supporting increasing worldwide collaboration? How will sovereignty gradually shift from nation states towards global structures? And perhaps even more importantly: how will the human mind evolve from a locally oriented survival instinct towards a sense of responsibility for the planet as a whole?

Society is becoming fluid. This process is, in all likelihood, irreversible. The great challenge of the coming decades will therefore not primarily be the control of technological innovation itself, but rather the development of new global forms of cooperation and responsibility. At present, we see democracies struggling under excessive bureaucracy, while major powers increasingly shift towards more autocratic forms of governance. Both systems, as well as institutions such as the United Nations and related international structures, will require substantial reform if humanity is to guide our fragile planet towards a stable, sustainable and responsible future.

Wars between nations solve nothing. On the contrary: besides causing immense suffering, they poison relationships between peoples and damage both nature and the global climate. Perhaps, however, humanity must pass through this current phase of breakdown and confusion in order to collectively realise that the old way can no longer continue. It may be best to regard this current period as a learning phase — one from which, hopefully, a new generation of leaders will emerge with a deeper understanding of how humanity must enter its next stage of development.