# Humanity Becomes a Single Hive Mind by Clifford Pickover > “In the next decade, communities formed by ideas will be as strong as those formed by geography. The Internet will dissolve away nations as we know them today. Humanity becomes a single hive mind, with a group intelligence, as geography becomes putty in the hands of the Internet sculptor.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *1999, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [research staff member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10728) — the official response page preserves this exact, continuous passage and its surrounding argument. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 1999 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 1999 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first record for the response object and all canonical reminder links derived from it. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/MARS|MARS]] - **Article:** [[articles/STEVE|STEVE Host Infrastructure Overview]] - **Article:** [[articles/Cyber-Physical Lessons from Imperial Beekeeping|Cyber-Physical Beekeeping]] - **Article:** [[articles/Modern Artificial Intelligence in the 1970s|AI in the 1970s]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Planetary Consciousness|Planetary Consciousness]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Planetary Consciousness|Planetary Consciousness]] - [[wiki/Extended Mind Thesis|Extended Mind Thesis]] - [[wiki/Collective Intelligence|Collective Intelligence]] - [[wiki/Superorganism|Superorganism]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “In the next decade, communities formed by ideas will be as strong as those formed by geography. The Internet will dissolve away nations as we know them today. Humanity becomes a single hive mind, with a group intelligence, as geography becomes putty in the hands of the Internet sculptor.” — Clifford Pickover, 1999, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-clifford-pickover-humanity-single-hive-mind ```