Why a Wrinkled World?

Why a Wrinkled World? 

Many years ago a young science student volunteered to draw blood from patients in the local hospital as a phlebotomist. On the hospital floor, the phlebotomist got to know one young patient, a bit older than himself. The young patient was Phil. Phil seemed mostly healthy, and over time the two grew to know each other. They smiled and laughed together and shared stories of their young lives. The phlebotomist met Phil’s mother and father. He met Phil’s girlfriend. But Phil had a serious disease – hodgkins lymphoma cancer.

One day, the phlebotomist found Phil’s bed is empty. Phil was gone. A few days later, the two friends met again. This time, at the pathologist’s autopsy table. Phil had died of hodgkins disease. 

To overcome his lifelong fear of death, the young phlebotomist had volunteered as a part-time autopsy assistant, learning how to use the scalpel and bone saw to open the body for the pathologist. One characteristic of hodgkins cancer is that it can attack the brain. As a result, the doctor and pathologist chose to dissect Phil’s brain. The phlebotomist did the cranial opening. Stepping away from his new friend Phil, the pathologist went to work; he removed Phil’s wrinkled brain, turned and handed it to the phlebotomist. 

I was that young phlebotomist.

For a moment that seemed to stand still, I realized that everything in Phil’s world was in my hands except for his immortal soul. Every event Phil knew since birth, every school activity and sports event, every person he had loved, and even our short exchanges together were held in this small gray, wrinkled organ between the palms of my hands. Time itself was captured within. This brain had grown from a small smooth mass in the womb to the thinking young adult I had known.

Like his brain, our worlds are unique, convoluted and complex.

From the moment the fetus grows and learns, new neurons are created. That smooth little fetus’ brain must become the size of a pillowcase or a tablecloth by the time it’s an adult brain…yet it must still fit into the little human head. And as this explosion of neuron gray matter growth occurs, it is constrained by the less flexible axon white matter that connects the neurons together. As a result, the brain grows into a multi-faceted, wrinkled organ. The explosion of  Globalization is much like the growth of that human brain.

Looking at the outside of the brain, we see only about one-third. The same is true of globalization led by today’s “Internected World”. The brain is not uniform, and the hidden Internet and knowledge based world are not uniform either. Much like the developed world countries, our brain’s frontal neocortex is where the most abstract, creative, and innovative work occurs: It is wrinkled, and packed with extra real estate to perform its complex functions. Meanwhile, the rest of the world like the rest of our brain is required to be fully functioning, yet some of it remains stuck in the primitive world. Today’s Internet-connected world is the same. With Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things, encrypted services, company Intranets, the Deep Internet, and the Dark Internet, – it’s hidden from view.

Our abilities to connect and communicate across time, space and cultures throughout history constrained both great local leaps in knowledge and human progress. Like the digging stick, the plow, and the washing machine, the Internet is a disruptive force of change in America, in China, and throughout our socio-political environs. This book takes a quick journey through history and deeper into today, exploring this, our wrinkled world and a way forward.