Worried about the great crises of our time? Have climate change, autocrats, polarization, wars, AI, and the morass of other problems shattered your faith in the future? You have lots of company as a sense of despair grips the globe. A global survey found a majority think, humanity is doomed.”
I offer an antidote to the prevailing pessimism. Beneath the surface of current disasters, long-term forces drive progressive change that surpasses short-term problems. Steven Pinker at Harvard noted that the Industrial Revolution led to a “Great Escape from poverty, disease, hunger, and illiteracy.” Poverty, for instance, fell from 90 percent of the world population in 1820 to 10 percent in 2020. He finds “spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being.”
I have done pathbreaking studies of social evolution showing this same drive for progress is creating a technologically connected, unified world. The world has been in a Knowledge Age since personal computers began to dominate in 2000, but a crucial pivot appeared when social media began fostering highly charged emotions, wild conspiracy theories, hatred for opposing views, and beliefs that contradict well-established facts.
Today’s wave of post-factual madness has been rising for decades, but its peak occurred in 2021 when the US experienced its only political insurrection. The storming of the Capitol represented an attempt to block the outcome based on the false belief that the presidential election was “stolen.” It’s difficult to be precise about historic turning points, but I feel confident in noting that when half of the nation believes in the “big lie,” we have entered a new stage of social evolution beyond knowledge.
This remarkable display of mass delusion makes it clear that a new era is upon us in which emotions, values, beliefs, free will, and other subjective thoughts supersede facts – an Age of Consciousness. Consciousness isn’t the same as “goodness,” as is often thought by New Age enthusiasts. Like knowledge, consciousness encompasses all in its domain, including hate, conflict, and delusion.
Many other scholars have also anticipated this nebulous frontier. Most notable is the Jesuit anthropologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who long ago fascinated us with his vision that the world would evolve into a “noosphere,” a great web of consciousness enveloping the Earth. It seemed a lovely but distant ideal, yet the digital revolution has now made that dream a reality. The noosphere is here today, and it promises to transform our lives, our work, social institutions, the global order, and our very minds and souls.
We once relied on telephones and newspapers to communicate. Now, we use 2 billion PCs, 14 billion cell phones and laptops, and 2 billion TVs. Information flows through 30 million internet servers, 3,500 space satellites, and 1 million miles of undersea cables. This planetary layer of digital connections knits 8 billion people into a living overlay of thought — the noosphere. The noosphere introduces an advanced stage in social evolution: the Age of Consciousness.
The digital revolution is automating knowledge and driving attention up the hierarchy of thought into the subjective realm of emotion, values, and beliefs that form higher consciousness. The resulting flood of random information forces people to make subjective choices based on what they like and believe, or even how they feel. As a result, subjective thought now constitutes a higher consciousness that supersedes facts.
The implications are historic, and it’s impossible to understand life today without seeing this crucial new reality.
An Age of Consciousness is here now, though it’s dominated by polarization, disinformation, and other threats that form a crisis of global maturity. Although one would think that consciousness implies “enlightenment,” we can see that it includes everything beyond knowledge: the good, the bad, the ugly — everything.
The rise of Trumpmania, social media madness, the cryptocurrency craze, and other boondoggles that rely on sheer belief remind us that life has moved beyond knowledge. As the digital revolution drives attention into the realm of subjectivity, the mass delusions that were onceconsidered rare are now ever-present.
Global consciousness may seem exotic, but my studies identify major trends in this direction. The digital revolution, booming green energy, the “democratization” of business, and the pressure of crisis itself are moving toward a largely cooperative globe. I know this may seem hopelessly optimistic, but it’s where the evidence leads.
Scientist Hannah Ritchie has found that gains in energy efficiency and solar and wind power are causing the world to reach peak carbon. CO2 emissions have declined roughly 20 percent in modern nations over the past decade, and China (the biggest emitter by far) passed peak emissions in 2025.
A breakthrough is underway among corporations. Prevailing threats are forcing business and social interests to work together. For instance, 90 percent of corporations now practice a quasi-democratic form of governance that serves social and environmental interests as well as profits.
Although such powerful trends may be promising, it would be foolhardy to assume a world free of risk. Promising possibilities can be diverted by environmental collapse, nuclear war, raging pandemics, and a variety of other threats. The current global conflict with Russia, for instance, could easily escalate into nuclear strikes, weapons fired from satellites, biological warfare, and more.
In the West, resistance to change is so great that the idea of a sustainable world seems near impossible. Oil companies are locked into the profits of fossil fuels. Almost all nations have pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions, but few are meeting their goals, and some remain intent on climate denial. The American GOP, for instance, advocates more of the same “drill, baby, drill,” while Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax.” Apart from a leading edge of activists, apathy is everywhere.
Essentially, the world is entering a great drama where revolutionary changes in technology, business, and society are reaching a critical point that threatens civilization. At the same time we are gaining the vast powers of knowledge, intelligence, and consciousness.
A survey of experts estimates some form of global consciousness is likely to emerge about 2033, give or take a few years — although at a modest 65 percent probability. If this forecast proves reasonably valid, a mature civilization is likely to follow in a decade or two. Not a perfect world, but one that works.
William E. Halal, PhD, is professor emeritus at George Washington University, Washington, DC, and founder of the TeleCast Project. Previously, he served as a major in the US Air Force, an aerospace engineer on the Apollo Program, and a business manager in Silicon Valley. Halal also worked for Grumman Aerospace Company on the lunar module of the Apollo program. He has published eight books and hundreds of articles, consults for corporations and governments, and is a frequent speaker, once substituting for Peter Drucker. His new book, One World? The Digital Revolution and the Rise of Global Consciousness (Amplify Publishing, Aug. 4, 2026), already Amazon’s #1 Best Seller on Globalization, forecasts an emerging stage of mature consciousness. Learn more at billhalal.com; and view this interview with futurist Gerd Leonhard.
