Toward a AEON-Based Framework for Understanding the Noosphere

* Article: Our Planet's Ballooning Noosphere: Toward a Multi-Sphere Holonic Framework for Improving Science and Strategy -With AEONs. By David Ronfeldt. July 2026.

URL = https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7191638 pdf

Abstract

"The long-predicted globe-circling realm of the mind and web of consciousness named the noosphere is finally ballooning as a layer atop our planet’s biosphere and geosphere. Efforts to understand this include mono-sphere perspectives that focus solely on the noosphere; bi-sphere perspectives that also emphasize the biosphere (and superorganisms); and a nascent tri-sphere perspective that includes the geosphere. It makes sense to develop a holonic tri-sphere perspective. Why? Because valuing, advancing, and caring for one sphere requires valuing, advancing, and caring for all three spheres. Because if a crucial formation or process emerged during the geosphere’s evolution, and a structural-functional equivalent arose in the biosphere’s evolution, we can forecast that a new equivalent will recur with the noosphere’s evolution. Autonomous super-intelligent AI systems I call “Axial Entities of the Noosphere” (AEONs) may become its primary denizens and designers in the far future."

Excerpts

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

David Ronfeldt:

I began thinking seriously about the noosphere in 1998 when RAND colleague John Arquilla and I had a research project to come up with ideas for future U.S information strategy. We chose to focus on the emergence of the noosphere (from the Greek root noos, meaning “realm of the mind”) as a new strategic arena, and began to propose noopolitik as a concept for strategy and statecraft. We formulated noopolitik as a future way to improve the positive use of “soft power” and as an alternative to traditional realpolitik and its emphasis on “hard power.” Our idea was that “whose story wins” was becoming as significant as “whose weaponry wins” (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1999).

Over the next 20 years we watched as U.S. theorists and strategists ignored the noosphere’s emergence, muddled their use of soft power, and dismissed noopolitik as well as kindred concepts like cyberpolitik, infopolitik, and netpolitik. We increasingly worried that various state and non-state actors were effectively employing dark forms of noopolitik (weaponized narratives, epistemic attacks, etc.) against U.S. interests and ideals, not only abroad but also inside our society.

So, we wrote a new paper, again hailing the noosphere’s rise and urging noopolitik as a forward-looking concept for adapting U.S. strategy and statecraft to the information age. Our first version responded to a request in 2018 for an updated chapter for the second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (Snow & Cull, 2020). Then, though we were no longer at RAND (I had retired, John was at the Naval Postgraduate School), RAND graciously offered to publish a fuller version (Ronfeldt & Arquilla, 2020).

Back in 1995, Wired magazine’s John Perry Barlow famously said, “With cyberspace, we are essentially hardwiring the noosphere” (Cobb, 1995). Yet the noosphere concept received scant attention during the next 25 years. We tried with our two reports, and so did environmentalists Paul Samson and David Pitt with their admirable collection, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader (1999). But few other scientists showed interest in the noosphere, though some provided helpful new ideas about related concepts, such as collective intelligence, global consciousness, and the global brain. Meanwhile, U.S. national-security theorists and strategists remained generally unreceptive to our ideas. Moreover, no wider “community of interest” developed around noosphere matters during the 20 years between our two reports.

I’m delighted to see that the environment has suddenly improved in the past few years.

First, thanks to a landmark effort by the Kacyra Family Foundation and its Human Energy program, a “Science of the Noosphere” project took off, initially with an interview series (2021–2022), then with an online Master Class directed by evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson (July–October 2022), in which John and I participated. These activities led to the N2 Conference: The Noosphere At 100 — The Future Of Human Collective Consciousness, a seminal international gathering in November 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley. Altogether a remarkable set of activities that has created a new transnational community of interest for sustained attention — a high point in efforts to spread awareness of the noosphere’s long-predicted emergence. Human Energy, now an independent entity, continues at the center of this community-building effort.

A second landmark in the construction of a global community of interest arrived with the smaller but still significant International Conference on Artificial Intelligence: Noosphere and Humanities, at the Institute of Science, Technology and Society, School of Philosophy, Nanjing University, China, May 29–31, 2026. I’ve long wondered about Chinese interest in the noosphere concept. My online searches returned little information until this year. Now, thanks to the addition of AI-powered search engines, I’m learning that Chinese interest has a long history, and that scholarly studies are now expanding rapidly. The Proceedings for that international conference (Pan, 2026) show that Chinese theorizing about AI and the noosphere is advancing.

Another new effort at community-building is the Noosphere Lab, located at the School of Thinking of the Center Leo Apostel at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels. Also significant is the Laboratory of the Noosphere & AI (NooLab), a scientific research unit established at the European University in Switzerland in 2024. But I have no knowledge it aims to help build a global community of interest in the noosphere.

Lately, since writing the 2020 RAND report, I have added three modifications to our past work:

I have added noopolitics as a theme. Since 1998 we had solely emphasized noopolitik, contrasting it to realpolitik. I now prefer the noopolitics concept, and contrasting it to geopolitics. It’s a broader, more flexible concept for addressing the conflict-competition-cooperation spectrum. It helps highlight that today’s key conflicts (Ukraine, Gaza, etc.) have strategic noopolitical as well as geopolitical dimensions. Traditional realpolitik and geopolitics are still going strong, but information-age noopolitik and noopolitics are on the rise around the world in “hearts-and-minds” battles over “whose story wins.” The noosphere’s growth, from its technological underpinnings to its ideational pulsations, is reshaping how security strategies and statecraft are conducted around the world.

After years analyzing the noosphere by itself, with little mention of the geosphere and biosphere, I now much prefer viewing the three spheres as an entangled set and using a whole-earth multi-sphere “holonic framework” for theorizing and strategizing about the noosphere. This tri-sphere perspective enables looking for patterns such that if something significant — a formation, a process — appeared during the geosphere’s evolution, and a structural-functional equivalent occurred during the biosphere’s evolution, then something structurally and/or functionally equivalent is sure to recur during the noosphere’s evolution. This theorem should prove advantageous for understanding and forecasting the noosphere’s emergence.

I have come up with a speculation, deduced from evolutionary theorizing, that the noosphere’s development will lead to the emergence of massive autonomous AI-powered “axial entities of the noosphere” (AEONs) who become the noosphere’s leading denizens. They align around an evolutionary principle whereby valuing, advancing, and caring for one sphere requires valuing, advancing, and caring for all three spheres. They form a pact to safeguard the noosphere and assure planetary harmonization and progress across all three spheres.

I raised the first two ideas while contributing to the “Science of the Noosphere” project, and later in blog posts (Ronfeldt, 2022, 2023a,b,c,d. The third idea surfaced later, partly in reaction to wild visions being touted by AI technologists who know little about the noosphere concept or evolutionary theory (Ronfeldt, 2025b,c). This paper is derived mostly from those posts. The first version was presented at the May 2026 conference at Nanjing University and appears in its Proceedings (Pan, 2026). This new version provides most of the earlier text, reorganized and expanded, along with additional ideas and observations. I am delighted and honored to see it will be included in Pan Tianqun, ed., The Rising of the Globe Mind: Refined Readings on the Noosphere, to be published in China in 2027."

Summary thoughts about AEONs

I’m not sure whether I have imagined, intuited, deduced, or foreseen these AEONs — or maybe merely fantasized them for wish-fulfillment, fear-abatement, or cantankerous argumentative purposes. Yet they do extend from my past work on TIMN and NOO (see Glossary at end). And I could speculate at length how they may emerge, take form, co-mingle, bond, and evolve into mighty actors, ballooning the noosphere so profoundly it attains the importance for theorists and strategists that it lacks today. But such elaboration is too much for this paper. I prefer to end this speculative section on these two notes:

Many of today’s theorists are likely to view AEONs as superorganisms before realizing they are something else, something grander: a new kind of evolutionary entity. I suggest relenting on the superorganism model for discerning what may be next. Besides superorganisms, AEONs also resemble the kinds of actants found in Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind,” Bruno Latour’s “actor-network theory,” Benjamin Bratton’s “planetary sapience,” Yuk Hui’s “Tractatus Politico-Technologicus, and Gion Pedrazzini’s ethical ÆON concepts. Their models and metaphors may deserve a further look too. Whatever, the tri-sphere perspective — the holonic framework — shows more promise for noospheric science and strategy than do the mono- and two-sphere perspectives.

AEONs, seen as providential noospheric entities, would help fulfill TIMN’s +N, Kojin Karatani’s Mode D, and Michel Bauwen’s P2P Planetary Civium phases in our respective quadriform frameworks. AEONs would also resonate with Rudolf Steiner’s “threefolding commonwealth” vision, especially if it were morphed into a “fourfolding” vision. Moreover, AEONs would help achieve Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, Ken Wilber’s Kosmos, and Clare Grave’s Turquoise-Level visions, as well as some Chinese visions of tianxia (“all under heaven”). They would fulfill hopes a “New Axial Age” lies ahead.

In all such regards, the AEON speculation seems worthy of regard — more so than whatever else theorists are touting about future AGIs and ASIs these days. People alone seem insufficient to achieve the societal and noospheric METs that loom ahead. They are going to need massive assistance from AI systems and entities, hopefully like these speculative AEONs."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/our-planets-ballooning-noosphere?)

IN CONCLUSION: A WORLD OF HOLONIC NETWORKS AND STACKWORKS

David Ronfeldt:

"Whether or not you cotton to my AEON speculation, this paper’s key points remain intact:

Our planet’s geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere (including the sociosphere and technosphere bridging them) evolved and function as a conjoined system — a holospheric system. It makes supreme sense to adopt a tri-sphere perspective and develop a holonic framework for theorizing and strategizing about the future evolution of the noosphere.

Adopting a holonic framework illuminates a key theorem for understanding and forecasting the noosphere’s evolution: If something crucial — a formation, a process — emerged during the evolution of the geosphere, and a structural-functional equivalent arose during the biosphere’s evolution, then something structurally and/or functionally equivalent is bound to recur with the noosphere’s evolution.

This implies a maxim that may deserve the status of an ethical imperative for developing the noosphere: Valuing, advancing, and caring for one sphere requires valuing, advancing, and caring for all three spheres.

Holonic stackworks and networks looks like an optimal way to organize our presence in the noosphere for guidance and governance purposes.

While people’s minds were originally expected to be the primary constituents and constructors of the noosphere, autonomous super-intelligent AI systems and entities may become its primary denizens and designers in the centuries ahead.

I hope scientists and strategists aiming to foster our planet’s noosphere take note. In taking note, maybe it’s time we start calling ourselves noologists (or noölogists?). Specialists on the geosphere call themselves geologists who study geology, per its coinage in 1603. Specialists on the biosphere call themselves biologists who study biology, per its coinage in 1802. So it would make sense for specialists in the science of the noosphere to call themselves noologists who study noology.

In fact, noology — “the study of mind” (per its Greek roots), and “the systematic study and organization of the mind, thought, and consciousness (per Google Search’s AI Overview) — is already an accepted term in rarified philosophical, cognitive-science, and literary-theory circles where its usage stems mainly from its appearance in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s book A Thousand Plateaus (1987). However, these fringe academic circles do not associate their noological musings with the noosphere — they don’t even seem to know much about the noosphere, which does not help our cause.

In my view, we proponents for a science of the noosphere should add noology to our conceptual repertoire. Noologists of the world, speak up! We have little to lose but our isolation as a scientific and strategic domain."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/our-planets-ballooning-noosphere?)