In this thoughtful presentation, Boris Shoshitaishvili’s N2 2024 explores the evolution of the noosphere concept from its origins with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Vernadsky to its relevance in today’s world.

He examines how their hopeful vision of planetary unity and progress contrasts with the complex realities of the 21st century, including climate change, disinformation, and societal polarization. Boris highlights the need to rethink the noosphere’s narratives, advocating for a pluralistic approach that acknowledges global inequalities and opens up diverse pathways for the future. Through examples from philosophy, history, and contemporary theory, he reimagines the noosphere as a contested and dynamic space for political and ecological action.

The N2 2024: The Noosphere & the Global South conference explored the intersection of technology, society, and the noosphere—the sphere of human thought and collective consciousness. Hosted by Human Energy and UM6P, this year’s event brought together leading thinkers, visionaries, and innovators to discuss solutions to the challenges posed by the techno-social era. Through engaging presentations and collaborative dialogue, N2 2024 aims to inspire actionable insights and transformative change.

Boris Shoshitaishvili's presentation:

The Hemispheric Nous: Making Global Distinctions against the Backdrop of the Noosphere

The noosphere is, in part, the proposition that human affect, reason, and technology interact on a planetary scale to form a single sphere encompassing all of Earth: a sphere of nous, or shared mind. The concept implies spatial continuity, wholeness, coverage, and participation-a sphere being the geometrical figure whose every surface point is equidistant from its center. It suggests that each human being should have a comparable opportunity to shape this shared domain. Given these themes, pairing the noosphere with the term “Global South” is an important provocation. Among other associations, “Global South” focuses attention on inequities in the human world: between a set of communities located (mostly) in the southern hemisphere and another (mainly) in the northern hemisphere. This loosely geographical demarcation of South and North is a successor framework to the earlier system that divided the world into “developing” and “developed”. That binary itself followed the Cold War-era tripartite division of human communities into a “first”, “second”, and unaligned “third” world. In this talk, I consider how this history of attempts to represent sociopolitical and economic divisions in the human world exists in tension with the singular “sphericity” typically assumed in discussion of the noosphere. If the noosphere is an aspirational planetary vision, then injustices and inequities separating human communities are planetary fissures-divisions in planetary nous. I argue that to fully take account of these fissures requires rethinking nous in a different direction from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Vernadksy's early theories of the noosphere.

N2 2024: The Noosphere & The Global South took place on December 16th - 18th in Ben Guerir, Morocco 🌐

The N2 Conference looks to deepen our present understanding and future vision for the noosphere, the sphere of human consciousness and mental activity especially in regard to its influence on the biosphere and in relation to evolution.

Learn more at https://www.humanenergy.io/

Watch this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Mhx1IsgprRU