Omnisentience, or something like that?

I had been vaguely aware of the origins of the internet, but I never knew it got started so that American computing could survive nuclear attack on a centralized hub. It's an organic sort of evolution, spreading a sort of consciousness (functional autonomy, at least) throughout the system. The rhizome comparison is interesting, but I rather feel that this is an entirely new phenomenon--one that defies analogy in a fundamental sense. We have no conception of anything like a mass mind, or at least nothing I can think of--the best I can do is to point vaguely in between a rhizome and an anthill. But the internet is gradually becoming more and more inseparable from "the system," which, though only possible due to the advanced technology that holds it together (computers, satellites, telephones, etc) only exists as "the system" in our heads.

If we look at the military origins of the internet as an organic action, an inevitable movement towards self-protection and perpetuation--the internet as subject rather than object--its continued expansion into other areas of the system takes on an interesting form. Society requires stability, and the division into three kinds of social systems (sovereign, disciplinary, control) seems neat enough. "Control" as I read it refers to the integrity of the system--I'm all for raging against the machine and so forth, but I don't think there's anything inherently "wrong" with the way the new technologies and the new social order force us to be in the system at all times. We're not used to it, and it's reasonable to feel our acquired sense of privacy disturbed, but I can't see the concept of privacy lasting all that much longer (I mean, a century or two, sure)--in a way it seems counterproductive. The nature of the system is to keep track of all its parts, because as technology progresses that's all that's required to maintain its integrity--eventually we'll have global wi-fi coverage or something like it, and by then we'll all walk around with iPhone supercomputers or something like that, and then the system will be omnipresent. I'm thinking that if we don't all blow ourselves up, a sort of global consciousness is inevitable. We can only think about it as "control," as though we'd be herded around by a sort of cyborg overlord, but I think the concept would be much more complicated than that--it's been a long time coming, but I think this new technology will force society as a whole to reconsider what autonomy and the self really mean. It's all happening commercially, of course, and we're not going to have a technological utopia (at least not for quite a while), but I think the cowboys are done for--more Snow Crash than Neuromancer, I mean.