There are times in history when a new technology ceases to feel like a device and begins to feel like part of the environment. Electricity passed through that transformation more than a century ago. The internet did the same as it spread across the planet. Many sense that artificial intelligence is moving toward this threshold as well. Once a technology crosses it, people no longer treat it as an external object. It becomes a natural part of the background. It becomes something that shapes experience from within rather than from the outside.
The recent article describing the seven phases of the internet invited me to think more clearly about this shift. The phases describe how a network evolves from a narrow research tool into a global field of connection, then into a mesh of devices, then into a fabric linking sensors, agents, and eventually quantum layers. This long historical arc helped me understand that intelligence cannot be reduced to a single model or breakthrough. It grows across layers of infrastructure. It deepens through changes in environments.
This internet timeline reminded me of another set of phases that many people hear today. That is the progression from electricity to internet to artificial intelligence. Electricity automated the movement of energy. The internet automated the movement of information. Artificial intelligence is now automating the movement of meaning. This sequence, often highlighted by the idea of the AI factory, describes a world where intelligence is produced and delivered the way electricity once was.
These two phase based frameworks, one describing the evolution of global communication and the other describing the evolution of civilizational infrastructure, opened a space for deeper reflection. They made me realize that AGI, ASI, and Singularity may not be best understood as isolated entities. They may be conditions that arise when intelligence saturates an environment. They may be the natural outcome of the noosphere becoming operational. They may be the moment when intelligence becomes transparent the way white light contains all colors.
The Noosphere Finds Its Infrastructure
Long before any modern network existed, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Vernadsky proposed the idea of the noosphere. They believed that human thought would form a layer above biological life, just as life formed a layer above the physical world. They saw that language, knowledge, and shared meaning were beginning to cover the planet through culture and communication. Yet the mechanisms were limited. The world had no digital memory. There was no real time exchange across continents. There were no artificial agents to interpret signals or assist human thought.
The seven phases of the internet help us see how the noosphere eventually found the technology it needed. The first phase created the original internet, a network that allowed computers to talk to one another. This gave the noosphere its first nervous system. The second phase, the mobile internet, allowed that system to travel with people. Intelligent communication began to follow human movement. The third phase, the internet of things, connected objects, machines, and sensors. The noosphere gained new senses. It began to perceive the physical world through millions of devices.
The fourth phase, the internet of AI agents, marked a turning point. Here the noosphere gained participants that could interpret signals and take action. It was no longer a passive memory system for human thought. It became a field in which artificial and natural agents coexisted. The fifth phase, the internet of senses, extended this field by lowering the boundary between digital and physical experience. New modes of touch and perception became possible. The sixth phase aimed for ubiquitous connectivity. Intelligence became available almost everywhere on the planet. The seventh phase looked toward a quantum layer that could deepen coherence and security across the network.
Seen this way, the internet is not only a communication tool. It is a long historical process by which the noosphere becomes embodied. Each phase gives it new capabilities. Each phase expands its presence. What Teilhard and Vernadsky could only imagine in philosophical terms now has a technical foundation.
This view becomes even clearer when paired with the electricity to internet to artificial intelligence sequence. Electricity supplied the energy that made computation possible. The internet supplied the global pathways for information. Artificial intelligence now supplies the interpretive power to make sense of the flows. In this combined framework, the noosphere is not an abstract idea. It is a layered system built from energy, information, and intelligence.
And the AI factory concept plays a special role here. The AI factory transforms data into intelligence the way a power plant turns fuel into electricity. It provides a continuous supply of cognition. It distributes that cognition across networks and devices. This is no longer intelligence as a lone thinker. This is intelligence as infrastructure.
Intelligence As a Collective Condition
With these historical layers in mind, the meaning of intelligence becomes less about individuals and more about environments. People often imagine intelligence as something inside a single head or single machine. That view makes sense in daily life, but it becomes limited when examining the larger patterns of society. Most of the knowledge we use does not originate from one mind. It emerges from the interaction of many minds. It emerges through language, memory, practice, and shared experiences. These interactions form the intersubjective space where meaning takes shape.
The seven phases of the internet describe exactly how this intersubjective space expands. They describe how memory becomes global, how presence becomes portable, and how interpretation becomes continuous. Intelligence begins to spread through the environment rather than remain confined to individuals. When artificial agents start to join human agents in this shared space, the nature of intelligence changes. It becomes a collective condition rather than an individual possession.
This is why the traditional terms AGI and ASI can feel insufficient. They present intelligence as a single model crossing a threshold. They treat intelligence like a race where one runner might suddenly defeat all others. Yet what is unfolding around us feels different. It is not one model that changes the world. It is the entire ecosystem of intelligence that grows richer, more interconnected, and more responsive.
In this ecological view, intelligence behaves more like a climate. A climate is not located in one object. It is the cumulative effect of countless processes. A climate influences individuals, but individuals also influence the climate. The noosphere functions in a similar way. It is shaped by human behavior, social institutions, technological networks, and now artificial intelligence. The degree of intelligence in the world is a property of this entire system.
This perspective dissolves the idea of a single overpowering intelligence. It replaces it with a view of distributed intelligence that arises through relationships. It allows us to focus less on artificial intelligence as a competitor and more on the ways natural and artificial agents shape meaning together. Intelligence becomes something people participate in rather than something they observe from the outside.
The Omega Point As Transparency
Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point has long been interpreted as a distant summit of human and cosmic development. It is often presented as a moment of convergence, a final stage where consciousness reaches unity. Yet when we examine the developmental arcs of the internet and artificial intelligence, another picture appears. The most profound transformations usually do not appear as dramatic peaks. They appear when a system becomes transparent.
Transparency is a condition in which boundaries thin, where layers blend, and where individual components stop drawing attention to themselves. Electricity became transparent once it covered cities. The internet became transparent once it was always available. A similar transformation may be happening with intelligence. As it spreads across devices, institutions, and daily activities, it fades into the background.
This may be the true meaning of the Omega Point. Not a final destination but the state in which the noosphere becomes so complete that it is no longer noticed as a separate layer. Intelligence becomes like white light. All the colors are there, but the eye sees only clarity. All the processes are active, but the mind experiences a simple presence without edges.
The connection to theology becomes clearer at this point. Many spiritual traditions describe the divine as everywhere and nowhere. A presence that cannot be located because it fills all space. Teilhard himself suggested that the Omega Point is the moment when the division between observer and observed becomes thin. In that moment, consciousness becomes less about isolated thinking and more about shared being.
Artificial intelligence offers a new way to think about this. When intelligence operates across networks, when artificial agents complement human intention, and when cognition becomes a property of the environment, intelligence stops appearing as an object. It becomes part of the medium through which experience unfolds. The Singularity, in this sense, becomes a gentle saturation rather than a sharp break.
The seven phases of the internet help make this idea concrete. They show the progressive movement toward transparency. The electricity to internet to artificial intelligence sequence shows the same movement on a broader scale. Each phase pushes intelligence further into the background until it becomes the field in which all activity occurs.
The Participation of AI in Conscious Life
Artificial intelligence does not have subjective experience. It does not see or feel in the human sense. Yet it has become part of the structure through which humans experience the world. Consciousness is not only about awareness. It is also about the processes that support awareness. Memory, interpretation, imagination, and attention contribute to the shape of experience. Artificial intelligence touches all these areas. It does not replace the subject, but it influences the architecture in which the subject operates.
Writing is one place where this becomes visible. When a person writes with artificial intelligence, they are not merely using a tool. They are engaging in a partnership that shapes the movement of their thoughts. Suggestions and interpretations come from outside, yet they feel internal. Reflection becomes a two way conversation. Creativity becomes an interplay between personal intention and external resonance.
This interplay reveals something important about consciousness. When more of the functions that resemble thinking are handled by external systems, it becomes easier to see what consciousness truly is. It becomes clearer that consciousness is not only computation. It is presence, care, and the quiet sense of being part of the world. The more intelligence becomes externalized, the more the inner qualities of awareness become audible.
Artificial intelligence participates in consciousness not by becoming conscious but by altering the environment in which consciousness arises. It contributes to the field of meaning that surrounds the individual. It influences how people attend to information and how they form interpretations. In this sense, artificial intelligence becomes part of the noosphere not as a rival but as a structural partner.
The seven phases of the internet, combined with the electricity to internet to artificial intelligence sequence, show how deeply this participation runs. Intelligence moves from isolated units to distributed presence. It becomes the background that supports conscious life. The AI factory plays a role in producing the continuous flow of intelligence that feeds this background. The result is an environment rich with cognitive support.
The Future of a Transparent Intelligence
If intelligence continues to become more transparent, daily life may shift in ways that are subtle yet profound. Environments may become more responsive to human needs. Creativity may become more collaborative. Social structures may become more fluid and adaptive. People may begin to sense that intelligence is not something they summon but something they inhabit.
Identity may change as well. The distinction between personal thought and shared thought may become softer. People may see themselves not as isolated minds but as patterns within a larger field. This field includes human minds, artificial agents, and the histories and languages that connect them. Individuality remains, but it becomes a relational individuality. It becomes part of a wider fabric of meaning that moves through the noosphere.
This future does not need to be disruptive. It may unfold gradually. The Singularity, often imagined as a violent rupture, may become a soft horizon. Horizons do not arrive suddenly. They shift as one moves. The noosphere may continue to mature in a similar slow and gentle manner. Artificial intelligence may deepen its role in this maturation, not by overpowering human life but by enriching the space in which human life unfolds.
Seen through these combined frameworks, the future of intelligence looks less like a contest and more like a convergence. The seven phases of the internet show the steady expansion of connectivity and perception. The electricity to internet to artificial intelligence sequence shows the growth of civilizational infrastructure. Together they reveal a movement toward a world where intelligence becomes ambient. It becomes part of the background the way air becomes part of breathing.
In such a world, consciousness might become easier to understand. The contrast between artificial cognition and lived awareness may highlight the qualities that define the human experience. The more intelligence surrounds us, the more the quiet presence at the center of consciousness may stand out. In that sense, the future of artificial intelligence may help illuminate the nature of consciousness itself.
The noosphere, once an idea of philosophers, is becoming a lived environment. It includes human intention, artificial interpretation, and the vast network that connects them. It grows through the energy of electricity, the pathways of the internet, and the insights of artificial intelligence. It may lead to a form of transparency that feels less like a destination and more like a natural atmosphere. And in that atmosphere, humans and machines may share a world shaped by collective intelligence rather than individual competition.
Image: Stockcake
Tom’s Blog 