Original subtitles

Freeman: Everyone has a beginning.

[ Baby crying ]

But when does that beginning begin?

Is it the instant two cells fuse together?

Or the moment we enter the world?

Scientists and religious leaders don't agree

on when the first spark of life occurs.

Is life just biology

or does our sense of consciousness

dictate whether we are truly alive?

If we can create consciousness,

can we build life out of nonlife and understand when life begins?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos lie through the wormhole.

Subtital By RA_One

Life is a miracle.

That's a word we use when we are moved by something

and when we don't understand how it happens.

Nine months before a child is born,

it's just a handful of cells,

no more complex, apparently,

than the bacteria that live on our skin.

Both these clumps of cells have genes.

They both reproduce.

One turns into something we value greatly.

The other just makes us sick.

But they are both miracles --

a collection of chemicals with a mysterious spark of life.

Did you ever make your own lunches growing up?

I used to make peanut butter sandwiches.

Every once in a while, I'd find a moldy slice of bread.

"Where did this green fuzz come from?" I wondered.

Just seemed to have appeared from thin air.

I wondered what would happen if I left it alone.

Would the mold keep growing into a fuzzy mold monster?

It didn't.

It was alive, but not in the way I was.

What was it inside me that made me grow into a boy?

Maureen Condic is a biologist

at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

She spends her weekends traversing

the Wasatch Mountains of Utah,

where life springs up all around her.

Condic: As a biologist,

it's always fascinating to come to the mountains,

because there's such a diversity of life around you,

and it all comes into being in radically different ways.

Freeman: All organisms reproduce,

but they have different ways of doing it.

The Aspen trees that pervade the mountains of Utah

clone themselves.

Offspring grow as shoots from the roots of more mature trees,

creating growths that are really the same tree

grown over and over again.

Some worms, on the other hand,

create their next generations in a different way.

Condic: There's a whole class of worms known as planaria.

They reproduce by attaching the back of their body to a rock

and stretching themselves out

until they literally tear themselves in two.

And then each of the two halves produce a full worm.

Freeman: Nature offers myriad ways for life to begin.

But the one that fascinates Maureen

is the way it happens for you and me.

And, no, it doesn't involve a stork.

Condic: So, human life comes into existence

in just a fraction of a second.

You have a human egg and a human sperm,

and their sole purpose in life is to find each other and fuse.

So, they come together, and in that one instant,

you create a new kind of cell -- a one-celled human embryo.

Freeman: This new cell has its own genetic code, its own DNA,

that is a unique mixture of the egg and the sperm.

Condic: And within this single cell,

there's a complete plan for development.

Development doesn't create that information.

It's there from the very beginning.

Freeman: From her understanding of embryology,

Maureen concludes that the life of a unique human individual

begins within the 1/4 of a second

it takes the sperm and the egg to unite.

That single-celled embryo

contains an elaborate instruction manual

with all of the information needed to create a human being.

You can think of it like

a camping tent that builds itself.

So, our tent is self-assembling because it has

all of the parts it needs to put itself together

and because it has a set of instructions built into it

that allow it to assemble into its final state.

Freeman: Life is like this tent,

only a billion times more complex.

After the single-celled embryo is formed,

it takes a journey down the fallopian tubes

to the uterus,

where it begins the process of cell division,

from 2 cells to 4 to 8 to 16 and so on.

After about one week,

the embryo arrives at the uterine wall

and implants itself.

A week later, the cells of the embryo

begin to reorganize themselves into a primitive body.

After three weeks,

the beginning of the nervous system is in place.

As days go on, cells continue to multiply,

blood vessels form, the heart starts to beat,

the backbone takes shape,

arms and legs begin to bulge out.

During that time,

the formation of the brain begins.

Condic: The cells and tissues of the embryo

undergo these amazingly complex cellular gymnastics

to give rise to structures, organs,

complex relationships that turn that flat embryo

into something that has form.

Freeman: Maureen's biological understanding

of the development of a human embryo

leaves her with little doubt

about when a new human life begins.

We all trace our own origins back to this single cell

that came into existence at sperm-egg fusion.

It's something we should try to understand

as a process of self-discovery,

as a process of understanding our natures.

This is where we began.

Freeman: But not all scientists trace an individual's origins

back to just two cells.

In fact, some scientists believe within one individual

there could be the ghosts of multiple lives,

that life on earth is an unbreakable chain of events

where one generation and the next

are blurred together.

Gammill: When I was a kid, I would go and visit my grandfather,

and he used to play chess, and I would go and watch him,

and I grew up learning to play with him...

Pawn to G-4.

...and then my father also taught my son,

and now my son and I play.

[ Distorted voice ] Checkmate.

I think there's an interesting parallel between chess

that was passed from one generation to another,

and what we know biologically now

is the passage of cells between generations.

Freeman: Dr. Hilary Gammill

from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

believes individual lives

are more interwoven than we ever imagined.

She wonders if inside all of us

there are traces of our relatives,

dating back generations.

Gammill: My area of focus is on the exchange of cells

between a mother and fetus during pregnancy.

The classic textbooks used to state

that there was absolutely no contact

between the fetal blood and the maternal blood --

they were just protected in separate compartments.

Freeman: For years, scientists thought when the placenta forms,

it acts as an impenetrable barrier

between the mother and the fetus,

so nothing as large

as a foreign cell with foreign genes

could pass through --

baby's DNA stays within the baby,

and mom's DNA stays with the mom.

By peering into the bloodstreams of mothers,

Hilary and her team have discovered something remarkable.

When they sampled just a teaspoon

of blood from the mothers,

they found dozens and dozens of foreign cells floating around,

cells from the mothers' babies.

So, we actually understand now that throughout pregnancy,

there is bidirectional exchange of information cells and DNA

between the mother and the fetus.

Freeman: Hilary's work shows the placenta is not at all impenetrable.

It's more like a sieve.

There are miniscule holes

that let cells out and let cells in.

These foreign cells can survive in our bodies for decades.

It's an exchange that happens

not only between mother and fetus.

Cells from other relatives may sneak in, too.

It is theoretically possible that we could have cells

that are exchanged from multiple different sources --

you know, older siblings

and certainly mothers and fetuses,

but past generations, as well.

Freeman: When a mother acquires cells from a fetus,

she could pass on these baby cells

to her next child.

A younger sibling could have cells

from the body of an older sibling.

These cells are more than just a curiosity.

They can act as soldiers in the body

and combat disease...

Those cells can be active against cancer cells

that develop in the recipient.

Freeman: ...But not all of these exchanged cells

protect and defend.

When our immune system

detects these foreign cells in the bloodstream,

it may decide to attack them.

Gammill: These small numbers of foreign cells

that are persistent in an individual

are associated with disease states,

like autoimmune diseases like systemic sclerosis.

The exchange of cells

may have both positive and negative consequences

for the health of the individuals involved.

Freeman: The presence of cells from our relatives

could change the course of our entire lives,

making us all more interconnected

than we ever thought possible.

Gammill: Understanding that cells are exchanged

commonly between individuals,

I think, blurs the borders between those individuals

so that the beginning of one life

and the end of another life are a little bit less clear.

Freeman: The life of some parts of our bodies

actually begins before our sperm and egg have ever met,

but one doctor in Stockholm

wants to push the beginning of life

in the other direction.

He believes we cannot be alive until we know we are alive.

When does human life begin?

In this age of in vitro fertilization

and prenatal medicine,

it's a question that scientists and doctors

struggle to answer every day.

Perhaps there's another way to approach the question.

How do you know if someone is home?

You knock on the door, see if someone answers.

When Dr. Hugo Lagercrantz was a younger man,

his life was stressful.

[ Baby crying ]

He was the director of the neonatal intensive care unit

at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital

in Stockholm,

where he monitored fetuses and newborn babies.

Fetal monitoring was quite new at that time.

There were a lot of false alarms,

so [chuckles] it was distressing.

Freeman: But Hugo's patients experienced far more stress

than he ever did --

not the mothers, the babies.

Lagercrantz: Being born is the most stressful event in life,

particularly if you're born in the natural way.

Freeman: When we are born,

we're taken from our warm, safe womb

and thrown into the world.

It's the most dramatic day of our lives,

but it's a day we don't even remember.

This made Hugo wonder,

"When do babies become aware of what's going on?

When does consciousness begin?"

He thinks we can look for clues by looking at fish.

Lagercrantz: Now there is a new law in Sweden

that you're not allowed to use hooks when you're fishing.

The idea is that they think

that the fish may be conscious and suffer,

and certainly the fish reacts to pain,

but I don't think the fish is conscious about pain.

It's more kind of a reflex.

Freeman: According to Hugo,

fish cannot experience the psychological aspect of pain

because they lack the brain circuitry

called thalamocortical connections.

Thank you.

Thalamocortical connections

operate like a switchboard in the human brain.

Whenever we see, hear, touch, smell, or taste something,

electrical signals go from our sensory organs to the cortex

so our brains can process what we experience in the world.

These thalamocortical connections

are crucial for consciousness

because we believe that consciousness --

at least high consciousness -- is localized in the cortex,

and if what you see, what you hear, what you sense

doesn't reach the cortex,

then you cannot be conscious about it.

Freeman: Hugo is now a neonatal researcher

and studies when human brains develop these connections.

When does the first spark of consciousness happen?

Donato, a 4-day-old full-term baby,

is here to help Hugo find out.

There are several criteria for consciousness.

One is being awake

and then to be aware of your body

and then, of course, to be aware what you see

and hear and smell, et cetera.

Freeman: Hugo and his team connect Donato to an instrument

that measures blood flow in his brain.

[ Monitor beeping ]

When Donato is exposed to certain stimuli,

Hugo can tell

if the baby's brain is receiving signals

and processing the outside world.

Milk is a scent Donato is used to,

which is why he shows little blood flow.

Vanilla, on the other hand, is a pleasant surprise,

causing the blood flow in the brain to spike.

[ Monitor beeping ]

Lagercrantz: With vanilla, it indicates

that the baby reacted in the cortex to this smell.

Freeman: When Hugo gives Donato a whiff of a toxic odor, like acetone,

he has a very negative reaction.

His blood flow goes down,

even below where he started before he smelled the milk.

It tells us that the baby seems to be conscious

of the good and bad smell,

which, I think, is very important

from an evolutionary point of view.

For survival, I mean, you must be able

to differentiate between what is good for you

and what is poisonous or not good for you.

Freeman: Hugo's study proves

that even a 4-day-old baby is already conscious,

but what about before we reach full-term?

Testing for consciousness in fetuses

is too invasive with current medical technology,

so Hugo tries to get clues

by studying premature infants born as young as 22 weeks.

I would say that after 25, 26 weeks

that they seem to have some degree of consciousness,

but before that, there are very few signs

that they are conscious.

Freeman: Hugo's research has led him to believe

that a baby cannot be conscious until it is about 25 weeks old.

So, is this when life begins?

I think before consciousness has developed,

you are not a person, actually.

I think this is the time when life begins.

Freeman: But one child psychologist thinks the beginning of life

comes much later...

...later than you could ever imagine.

Mark Twain once wrote,

"Man is the only animal that blushes...

or needs to."

Blushing is a uniquely human reaction,

one that stems

from our high level of self-awareness,

but babies don't blush.

It's something they have to learn.

Does human life only truly begin when we become self-conscious?

Philippe Rochat is a child psychologist

at Emory University.

He has spent his career

embarrassing himself in the name of science.

So, if I have my sticker on the forehead

and I see people giving me looks, okay,

I'm gonna start to be unsettled and concerned.

I mean, something is wrong about myself.

I think that to be human is to be concerned about reputation.

At the psychological and cultural level,

life begins, indeed, in humans

with the emergence of self-consciousness --

blushing, embarrassment, and shame.

Freeman: Humans have developed a social brain.

We are the only species

that do things like wear clothes and jewelry.

Monkeys don't wear makeup.

We are the only species

that is profoundly concerned with how the world sees us.

According to Philippe,

only when a child develops this concern

is he fully human and psychologically alive.

Rochat: Okay.

Come in.

Philippe is the head of the Emory Infant and Child Lab,

where he is trying to detect when children become aware

of how they are perceived by the world.

You can sit here. Okay.

He says a first sign is when a child feels

the pressure to go along with a crowd.

Meet 1-year-old Booker.

Hey, Booker, we're gonna play.

Philippe and Booker's mother

have pink stickers on their foreheads.

Look -- this is goo-goo.

Rochat: So, we create this social norm.

Then we place the mark on the kid's head

unbeknownst to him, surreptitiously,

and we look at the child's reaction

when he sees that he, too, has a mark on the forehead.

Freeman: If Booker's brain has developed an awareness

of what other people think of him,

he will leave the sticker on his head

to fit in with the others...

...but Booker is more concerned

with getting the pesky sticker off his head

than he is with fitting in.

Okay, Kayden,

are you comfortable there, huh?

But when Philippe tries the same test

on 4-year-old Kayden,

he gets a very different reaction.

Kayden basically freezes in front of his own image.

He noticed that we all have a sticker on the forehead,

and he leaves the sticker on.

So, there's this idea of conformity.

They care about their own image and self-presentation.

This is something that emerges by two to three years of age.

Freeman: It's a big milestone,

but Philippe's research has shown

that even a 3-year-old is not yet fully self-aware.

What?!

Paper on my head?

There is still another level

of psychological development to reach.

Okay. Look. I have some cups here.

I think they are beautiful.

This is 4-year-old Sidney.

I'm gonna build something with them.

Sidney watches as Philippe builds what he is calling

the most beautiful sculpture in the world.

Whoa!

But it's very fragile, huh?

I'm not sure it's gonna hold,

but I'm gonna get some glue to put the cups together.

So, don't touch it, okay?

I'll be right back.

As Sidney patiently waits for Philippe to return with glue

to secure the precious work of art,

Philippe secretly pulls a transparent fish wire

that is connected to a bottom cup.

And the question is, is to what extent

the child will show concern

that he's gonna be seen as responsible

for the collapsing of the sculpture.

Freeman: Sidney is not fazed by the tragic collapse

because he does not care if he looks like the culprit.

Everything okay?

Oh! What happened?

Did you touch it?

No.

He's not concerned with how Philippe will perceive him.

When Philippe plays the same trick

on 5-year-old Milo...

That was scary.

...he takes action and tries to rebuild the pyramid

before Philippe returns.

Rochat: And what we've seen with Milo and other 5-year-olds

is the great concern...

...about how are they gonna be perceived and judged,

which is a huge step

in the development of consciousness.

Freeman: Philippe's tests chart the development

of a fully conscious brain.

Just as a fetus develops in stages

from a single cell to a baby over the course of nine months,

consciousness in the brain grows in stages, too.

Philippe believes consciousness comes to full-term

after about five years...

What happened?

It just fell by itself.

How is that possible?

...and to him, it's the mark of when we are truly alive.

Why don't we put it back together?

Rochat: What it means to be alive?

I think it's not to be a robot and not to be a machine.

To be alive is more than sensing the world,

but to be alive is to feel the world.

To say that a child's life does not begin

until he becomes self-conscious has radical implications.

A 4-year-old is not alive,

but a newborn piece of machinery might be...

If it can think on its own.

Even a child can tell that a spider is alive...

...and a rock is not...

...but what if a lifeless object became a life-form?

Can life begin inside something that's dead?

Good afternoon. Thank you for coming.

I'm here to do a presentation on Project Annabelle.

Freeman: Kate Izhikevich is on a serious mission.

She has a plan to build the first ever living machine.

I've always wanted a chihuahua, and I've always had a thing

that I wanted to name it -- Annabelle.

Freeman: She is facing her toughest critic yet --

renowned computational neuroscientist

Eugene Izhikevich, also known as dad.

I decided that, what if I could make a dog that was robotic?

Eugene: Kate has been asking me for a real dog

since she was three years old,

and for the last two years,

she has been asking me for a robotic dog.

So, no mess. It eats and poops out batteries.

Kate thinks that Project Annabelle is possible

because I do computational neuroscience

and I build artificial nervous systems for robots.

Kate: I hope Project Annabelle

will become my dad's first priority.

Thank you.

Freeman: Kate thinks her dad is the best man for the job.

Eugene has built the most detailed computer model

of the human brain --

100 billion neurons

and almost 1 quadrillion synapses.

His ultimate goal is to create consciousness

in an artificial nervous system.

He thinks it could be the beginning

of a new life-form, one never before seen on earth.

I don't believe that consciousness is something

that only has to be part of a human brain.

I think we can create computer programs for robots

that possess this property.

Freeman: Eugene and his team

think they have found a way to do this.

Instead of giving robots step-by-step instructions

with a program to make them move,

they want their robots to figure out how to move

and learn on their own,

just like living, conscious beings.

They are building their robots' electronic brains

modeled on biological ones.

Somebody says, "What's the most important concept in the brain?"

I would say it's the neuron.

Freeman: Neurons are the brain cells

that help conscious, biological beings,

like these dogs, learn.

We may think biscuits are the key to a dog's learning,

but it's actually the neurons in his brain.

When a dog learns how to fetch, the neurons in his brain

fire spikes of electricity that create pathways.

As he practices more and more,

his neurons fire faster and faster

and electricity flows more efficiently

down the new pathway.

[ Dog panting ]

[ Dog barks ]

[ Dog barks ]

Eugene and his team of roboticists

are building artificial networks of neurons

that fire spikes of electricity and create favored pathways

just like the neurons in a biological brain.

They wanted to see what would happen

if they wired these spiking neurons

to a robotic body.

Could a robot learn how to move and become aware of its body

and its environment all by itself?

Could a robot become conscious?

Eugene: Our approach to robotics

is quite different from the standard approach.

We don't program robots.

We endow them with artificial nervous systems

and their own experiences.

For example, a robot starts by moving their hands

and moving their necks

and just exploring their own body,

and after that, users -- people -- can teach the robots

the same way as they teach dogs and cats different tricks --

with reward and punishment.

Freeman: Eugene and his team use different body shapes

to see how many kinds of movements a robot can learn.

This robot is trying to learn how to stand up.

Its artificial brain is telling its body how to move.

Eugene: They look alive,

and some of the demos that I show to my daughter

look so creepy that she's said

that we're torturing a baby robot.

Freeman: By endowing Eugene's artificial brains with a body

and letting them explore the world,

these robots acquire experience...

They development behaviors.

Are they becoming alive?

You can imagine a situation when you have a set of robots

having access to raw materials.

You can even hypothesize that it's possible for these robots

to kind of create copies of themselves,

and then such a community of robots

would act as a life system.

Freeman: Perhaps the day will come

when one of Eugene's robots will feel emotion,

maybe even blush.

Artificial life will then be indistinguishable

from our own...

...but building robots may not be the only way

to create new life on earth.

One scientist in Denmark

is searching for the perfect recipe.

He thinks the ingredients to produce new life-forms

are right under our noses.

If we build robots that become self-aware,

then humanity will have created an entirely new form of life.

It will be the first time in billions of years

that something nonliving became living,

but there might be another way to create brand-new life-forms,

not in a robot, but in a petri dish.

Martin Hanczyc

from the University of Southern Denmark

is trying to figure out when life begins

by going back to a time when life was simpler.

As a biochemist, he knows that in order to understand life,

he has to look at the simplest form

that appeared on earth a very long time ago.

Hanczyc: When we think about the origin of life,

there must've been a very interesting transition

from material that we wouldn't consider living

that gave rise to organize

what we would call life or biology.

So, it's a big mystery, and it's a fascinating mystery.

Freeman: How can inanimate objects become animate?

What sparked the transition from nonliving to living?

Martin's work as a biochemist inspires him

to ask that question wherever he looks.

Hanczyc: So, what we're looking at here is an old windmill.

It's from, I think, the 1830s, and we are considering

whether an artificial construction like this

has any similarity to living systems.

Living systems have a body, they have a metabolism,

and they have some sort of inheritable information.

Freeman: Clearly, this windmill has a body.

It has a metabolism

that takes wind energy from the outside

and uses it as power,

and it has inheritable information.

Hanczyc: There is a blueprint for this that has information

about how to put the parts together

to make a functional windmill.

Freeman: Humans can use these blueprints and create modern windmills.

In a sense, you could say

that windmills have evolved and multiplied.

However, something important is missing.

Windmills cannot grow all by themselves.

They rely on humans to assemble them,

but the first forms of life must've assembled themselves.

Martin wanted to see

if he could find a recipe made of nonliving materials

that could build itself a body and become alive.

We think one of the key steps in the origin of life

is actually the self-assembly of molecules together.

Freeman: Martin wondered what kind of chemicals

might behave like this.

He realized he had to look no further

than the kitchen pantry -- oil.

As we all know, when you combine oil and water,

they don't mix,

but the combination forces the oil molecules

to self-assemble and form big droplets.

[ Oil molecules cheering ]

These are the bodies Martin decided to use

for his lab-made life.

[ Oil molecules scream ]

Hanczyc: So, when we make an oil droplet in a dish, nothing happens.

You just get a nice, spherical oil drop

that just sits there in the dish,

but the key was how to, then,

power some sort of movement of the system.

We wanted to put in a metabolism.

Freeman: Martin injected his oil droplets with molecules

that break down into soap bubbles

when they encounter water.

The bubbles spread from the middle of the droplets

to the edge, pushing them around like a motor.

It's a working metabolism.

You could say it's almost alive.

Hanczyc: We were very excited when we saw this

because not only does it work, but it worked rather quickly.

Freeman: Martin has successfully created a self-assembling body

that can metabolize and move on its own.

Next, he arranged for a little oil-droplet soiree.

Could he mimic the process of reproduction?

Hanczyc: And it's interesting

that when we put more than one droplet into an experiment,

they tend to follow one another, almost like a dance.

Freeman: The oil droplets are being social,

and we all know what a little mingling

and some good chemistry can lead to.

Each droplet is giving out a chemical signal,

and therefore the droplets

are able to communicate with each other

through this kind of chemical language.

Freeman: But even if one of Martin's droplets meets "the one,"

what about inheritable information?

Do they have a genetic blueprint?

We are thinking of how to address this question

of inheritance and genetic information.

One way to do it is to take some lessons from biology

and put something in like RNA or DNA,

but we're thinking of more primitive ways

of understanding the emergence of information.

Freeman: Martin is still working

on recipes for inheritable information,

and he's on the brink

of creating a living organism from nonliving materials.

If there is a line

between the living and nonliving systems,

then it must be a very blurry line.

Freeman: From artificial cells to artificial neurons,

scientists are creating new life with their own hands,

but one former physicist

thinks there could be another version of life arising,

growing out of the collective experience

of all of humanity.

Life on earth began

as a simple cycle of chemical reactions

in a bubbling, primordial pond.

Four billion years later,

those chemical reactions have spread across the planet

and have become so complex

that they can think and talk, like me,

but something new is happening.

Connections between computers have spread worldwide,

forming a dense electronic web,

and now these global networks -- one electronic, one chemical --

are interacting.

A new life could be about to begin

on a scale unlike anything earth has ever known.

Evolutionary cyberneticist Francis Heylighen

at the free University of Brussels

thinks humanity is giving birth, and this baby is big.

Heylighen: If we look at global society,

at all the seven billion people on this planet,

people become more and more connected into a coherent being.

The Internet gives you immediate access

to all the important ideas.

Nowadays, ideas travel the ocean.

They can do that with almost the speed of light.

That means the speed is comparable

to the speed that the neurons in our brain use

to talk to each other.

Freeman: The global network that connects all of us

facilitates massive amounts of information sharing,

information that has unveiled secrets

that explain how our universe works.

The Large Hadron Collider at Cern, for example,

could not have detected the elusive Higgs boson

without the ability to share tremendous amounts of data

across the globe at great speeds.

Heylighen: If Galileo could immediately have talked

with all his colleagues,

I'm sure that science would've developed much more quickly.

Freeman: Francis and his team of computer scientists

have invented a mathematical model

to measure what the Internet is doing.

Their goal is to find out

whether it is becoming a global brain.

Heylighen: In the mathematical model, like in all scientific models,

you make a kind of simplification of reality.

Instead of having a real person,

you will have a small computer program

that in some way behaves like a real person.

Freeman: Francis' models are like global fMRIs,

where people act like the neurons in a giant brain.

Just as neurons learn by firing back and forth,

people fire information to one another electronically.

Francis believes as connections between people

increase in number and strength,

our global brain will become more intelligent.

Hmm.

Heylighen: You see that the network of connections --

it's getting better at what it needs to do.

New connections are created,

old connections that are no longer useful disappear,

and the whole thing is constantly self-organizing.

Freeman: Francis' work has shown him

that our global brain is adapting, learning.

Humanity and the Internet are merging

to become a giant, living being.

He compares this beginning of global life

to the beginning of life

for his 9-year-old daughter, Nia.

This is a picture of Nia in the womb.

She had a rudimentary brain,

but the brain was basically a bunch of cells.

There was no interconnection --

learning and experiencing over the months and the years

to find what are the right connections.

She started out as this bunch of cells,

but then she gradually developed into a smart, intelligent,

adventurous little girl that likes to climb in trees.

Freeman: A single cell in Nia's body

doesn't know what to do on its own.

It is the coordinated effort

of the billions of neurons in her brain

that tells her leg muscles how to climb a tree trunk

and tells her arm muscles

how to propel herself from branch to branch.

Francis believes humans and the web

are working together in the same way.

If life begins with a brain,

then humanity has just climbed to a new level of awareness.

Heylighen: It is the beginning of consciousness

at the global level

that we see with the emergence of the Internet.

So, it is a kind of a beginning of life.

Freeman: A human being cannot survive without a brain,

a brain cannot survive without a body,

and now the body of humanity and the brain of the web

may be evolving into a superintelligent organism.

Could it be the beginning of a new form of life?

When does life begin?

We now know there are several answers

to this question.

When sperm and egg meet,

they create a new and unique genetic blueprint.

Life takes another leap forward when creatures become conscious,

be they babies, toddlers, or robots.

And when all those individual life-forms merge,

becoming part of a global superorganism,

life on earth will advance one more step,

and perhaps, one day,

that new life-form will ask where its life began

and what miracles are yet to be born.

Subtital By RA_One