Truth in Fiction: Cameron’s Avatar and the “Global Brain”

Watching Avatar recently got me to thinking about what Cameron was trying to describe in this movie.

If you haven’t seen it (under a rock jokes aside), the world of Pandora has a global network of data that can be accessed by the indigenous population. This network is embodied as the planet itself and connection happens when the natives connect a piece of themselves (nerve endings hidden in their braid) to vines hanging from special trees.

This is an obvious metaphor for our own changing human...