What if digital communication felt as real as being touched? This question led acclaimed science writer Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and has resulted in World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines and the Internet (Free Press; February 2011) — the first book to explain exactly how humans and computers could be merged and the risks, implications, and amazing possibilities that await us in the future. World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the realm of science fiction and reveals how we are on the verge of a radical new understanding of human interaction.

Please see the video above for a March 21 conversation with writer Michael Chorost on how we communicate, how we can connect more fully with one another in a hyper technological age, and how our addiction to email and texting can be countered with technologies that put us—literally—in each other’s minds.