# The Internet Exposes What Our Models Still Miss About Conscious Minds by Lee Smolin > “The Internet is also itself a metaphor for the emerging paradigm of thought in which systems are conceived as networks of relationships. To the extent that a Web page can be defined only by what links to it and what it links to, it is analogous to one of Leibniz's monads. But Web pages still have content, and so are not purely relational. Imagine a virtual world abstracted from the Internet by deleting all the content so that all that remained was the links. This is an image of the universe according to relational theories of space and time, it is also an image of the neural network in the brain. The content corresponds to what is missing in those model, it corresponds to what physicists and computer scientists have yet to understand about the difference between a mathematical model and an animated world or conscious mind.” > **— Lee Smolin**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [WE HAVE BECOME HUNTER GATHERERS OF IMAGES AND INFORMATION](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11653) — Edge published this exact passage in its 2010 Annual Question collection, *HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?*. The response page preserves the surrounding argument and qualifications. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 2010 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2010 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first record for the complete response cohort and this passage's promotion status. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Article:** [[articles/Modern Artificial Intelligence in the 1970s|AI in the 1970s]] - **Article:** [[articles/Christopher Nolan's Odyssey at the Threshold of Machine Succession|Nolan's Odyssey]] - **Article:** [[articles/Cyber-Physical Lessons from Imperial Beekeeping|Cyber-Physical Beekeeping]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] - [[wiki/Sentience|Sentience]] - [[wiki/Self-Awareness|Self-Awareness]] - [[wiki/Substrate Independence|Substrate Independence]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The Internet is also itself a metaphor for the emerging paradigm of thought in which systems are conceived as networks of relationships. To the extent that a Web page can be defined only by what links to it and what it links to, it is analogous to one of Leibniz's monads. But Web pages still have content, and so are not purely relational. Imagine a virtual world abstracted from the Internet by deleting all the content so that all that remained was the links. This is an image of the universe according to relational theories of space and time, it is also an image of the neural network in the brain. The content corresponds to what is missing in those model, it corresponds to what physicists and computer scientists have yet to understand about the difference between a mathematical model and an animated world or conscious mind.” — Lee Smolin, 2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-lee-smolin-internet-exposes-models-still-miss ```