The internet

[Veho Nex]

Can the Internet be considered a living entity? Even self aware. Can it be the first form of true artificial intelligence developed by man kind?

With the defintion of living and entity being:


liv·ing   
[liv-ing] –adjective
1.
having life; being alive; not dead
2.
in actual existence or use; extant
3.
active or thriving; vigorous; strong

–noun
11.
the act or condition of a person or thing that lives
12.
the means of maintaining life; livelihood
13.
a particular manner, state, or status of life

en·ti·ty   
[en-ti-tee]
–noun, plural -ties.
1.
something that has a real existence; thing
2.
being or existence, especially when considered as distinct, independent, or self-contained


I think the internet is a hive mind in a ways, capable of having millions, even billions of inputs, to come up with its ideas. Website like 4chan or even our own .org can be separate functioning parts of a much larger, albeit, digital brain. When the majority of this brain decides upon something it can make major changes in our world. If any one person suddenly ceased to use the internet it would be like a cell in a brain going dormant or dying. The internet would continue to thrive and expand, would continue to form its own thoughts and opinions about the world.

What do you guys think?

[rajpoot]

Like the human brain, the Internet can be considered to be made up of small cells, yeah. But the main difference is that the collective organisms don't have one single consciousness like a human being. The Internet is made of sentient cells, but they do not form up one single huge consciousness.
It can however be equated to a colony of algae I think.

Edit:
The way to make Internet come 'alive' is to write a super-program that can collect all those inputs from single cells, analyze it and reach a decision on its own. Currently, the decisions that are made, are made through consensus of cells...for example polls.