Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intelligence"?

[Confused Ape]

That's rather Teilhard de Chardin.

Better Teilhard de Chardin than the Skynet of the Terminator movies.

Stephen Hawking had some interesting things to say about computer viruses in one of his lectures.

Life In The Universe

For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system, that I have given. Like a biological virus, it is a rather degenerate form, because it contains only instructions or genes, and doesn't have any metabolism of its own. Instead, it reprograms the metabolism of the host computer, or cell. Some people have questioned whether viruses should count as life, because they are parasites, and can not exist independently of their hosts. But then most forms of life, ourselves included, are parasites, in that they feed off and depend for their survival on other forms of life. I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image. I shall return to electronic forms of life later on.

Even if computer viruses can be counted as some kind of life there's no evidence, as yet, that they'll result in the internet evolving consciousness.