The Earth's nervous system and the Matrix

(Written two years ago as a response in a forum. I'm just putting this here for someone to read, and to reference it later in the Pantheism stuff - when I get down to blogging a bit more of it)

And hey, I got a decent one for the hilltop:
Think of the Earth's consciousness as a really, I mean _really_ slow thing.
And try visualizing the greater part of the earth's 'nervous system' as a fuzzy sort of mold, a fungal thing, very thin, on the surface, slowly growing, absorbing consciousness.
And speeding up its 'thought processes'.
...
Now think of the telephone, the internet, multiplying the neural network capabilities of the mold.
Fractal interconnectedness, strange attractors, William Gibson's* Singularities popping up in the Matrix...

We may be in for a few surprises, and the Earth may be too :)

* William Gibson, Count Zero,1986, the Matrix Voodoo thing was such a stroke of genius, not that the guy lacked any.