In a recent episode of PBS’s micro-documentary series Off Book, titled Generative Art – Computers, Data, and Humanity, Will Wright chimes in on “Spore and the Metabrain,” likening the world-evolving game to social media.
Technology… is allowing us to group together in specialized online communities. These are almost like higher-level brains that are capable of things that no one individual could do…
Spore… becomes a… collective fantasy between all the different players. Everybody’s building their own fantasy world an their own fantasy creatures, but at the same time those fantasy creature, planets, and whatnot are going out to the net, and populating other people’s worlds. So at some point you move out of your own local fantasy and start interacting with other peoples’… Humans are really good at mining our own intelligence into a useful format.
Listen to him starting at the 4:11 mark.
-Jason Johnson