"Organic chemist, computer scientist, visionary, Joel de Rosnay has been at the forefront of the complexity movement for nearly thirty years. In this elegant and daring book, he builds upon his early pioneering work in the application of the sciences of complexity to the study of living systems to persuasively argue that we are at the verge of a profound evolutionary leap, as monumental in its implications for life on Earth as was the emergence of multicellular organisms. Just as importantly he explains how, in the face of sweeping changes to the very fabric of organic existence, we must conduct ourselves politically, economically, and ethically, in the years ahead, if we hope to vouchsafe our survival as species in the third millennium. In a grand synthesis that unites modern cybernetics with the sciences of complexity, de Rosnay demonstrates that the next stage in the natural progression from lower to higher levels of organization - cell into organism, organism to population, population into ecosystem - is the cybiont, a planetary superorganism made up of all humans, machines, organisms, networks, and nations. But, as intelligent beings, endowed with free will, human beings are, uniquely, more than just "cells" in the superorganism which is just coming into being. As de Rosnay is prompt to point out, we are also its facilitators, and, as such, we have it in our power to decide what form the cybiont takes, nurturing partner, or Frankenstein's monster inimical to all human life."--BOOK JACKET.