The Global Consciousness Project

 
What is the nature of Global Consciousness?

About us

Publications and information for the Media

General description of the Project

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is a volunteer collaboration involving about 100 researchers, analysts, and egg hosts. Some of us work at universities or institutes in various parts of the world, but these institutions are not funding sponsors or responsible hosts of the Project. In particular, this project is not sponsored by Princeton University—originally the Project was created in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab at Princeton University, but over time the Project evolved—while the GCP remains dynamic, it does not now have a central physical laboratory, instead it exists and functions in the virtual space of the internet, with the Project’s equipment, scientists and researchers connected electronically from far-flung locations around the globe. The Project is directed from Roger Nelson’s home office, with logistical support from the Institute of Noetic Sciences at noetic.org. Our funding comes from private donations given by a number of contributors.

For conditions of use of GCP materials, see the relevant section near the end of this page.

Journal articles

Articles and technical papers have been published in several peer-reviewed venues. A longer list is available on the publications page. A overview done in 2011 is Effects of Mass Consciousness, published in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. Another recent article (2008) in the Journal of Scientific Exploration summarizes 9 years of data: The GCP Event Experiment. A paper on the role of Emotions in the GCP is available. The possibility of precursor effects is discussed in a AAAS proceedings paper on Anomalous Anticipatory Responses in Networked Random Data.

A technically robust analysis of the September 11 2001 results has been published in Foundations of Physics Letters, and the page-proof is available. Two related articles are in Volume 16, Number 4, (Winter 2002) of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. An early, now historical article describing GCP methods and procedures and summarizing the first two years of results, was published in the Journal of Parapsychology in 2001, with a preprint available for download. These and some less technical articles are included in an annotated list of articles.

Descriptions & introductory materials

A short and readable introductory article (2009) is in EdgeScience magazine, published by the Society for Scientific Exploration. Another short article was published by National Geographic on the GCP, apparently commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It includes a video interview by Adrian Nelson, available on YouTube. An interview (update Sept 2016), by Dick Samson for the World Future Society website touches on important core questions. The original 2014 version is available as Connected Consciousness.

Another fairly recent (Nov 2010) interview is Dara Brown’s Today Show Science segment for MSNBC.com. There are a number of other YouTube pieces, including an hour-long video lecture by Peter Bancel, at GCP Videos, and see below.

The descriptive material about the project has been written over a period of years, and while it is accurate, much of the material is dated. A One Page Summary is available, though it too is inevitably out of date since the GCP is a dynamic project. For current work, keep your eye on the What’s New block on the home page, and on the GCP blog. A description of the project’s development can be found in the EGG Story, written in 2002, or by following links from the homepage. Some of the most frequent questions, including skeptical commentaries, are discussed in the FAQ.

Radio, TV, Internet

A recent interview (May 2018) by Mantz and Mitchell is available for download as a 50Mb mp3 file. It's an hour long exploration of GCP design, results, and implications. My sound level is too low, but it's audible.

On the order of two dozen YouTube videos are available, exploring technical and aesthetic aspects of the GCP. Some have been produced by the GCP, but most by news organizations, documentary producers, and independent artists and filmmakers. A dramatic but generally accurate account is given in Morgan Freeman’s narration of Through the Wormhole, The 6th Sense, from science.discovery.com.

A German team led by Thomas Zintl produced a high quality documentary in 2005 for ARD and MPR Film und Fernseh Produktion, showing state of the art psi research with a particular focus on the GCP. The English version, 5th Dimension: Mind Over Matter is a 50 minute movie with nice coverage of the GCP in a context of historical background and interviews with leading consciousness researchers.

We have frequently been the subject of news or media specials, such as Time Magazine’s article by Science writer Michael Lemonick, May 30 2005. For a quick 3-minute news video segment from CBS New York by correspondent Brendan Keefe recorded on May 13 2005, (also available on YouTube, or on CBS 2’s website.)

A YouTube video excerpt from an interview by Gabriella Szilagyi for Hungarian TV gives a basic introduction to the project. On March 23, 2006, Garvin Thomas and Dean Smith of KNTV San Francisco (NBC11.com), did a special report, The Science of Connecting Mind Over Matter, available on YouTube. (A compressed, Real Media version is also available, a large file of 300 MB). A more comprehensive piece was done by Discovery Canada, Daily Planet Show June 2004 (a RealMedia stream). Also from Canada is an hour-long interview by Bernice Landry on the CBC Ideas show in Windows Media Audio format, with an mp3 version also available. Additionally, an interview in April 2007 by Kala Ambrose for Explore Your Spirit is available (48 Mb mp3).

The GCP is logistically part of the IONS research program, and there are some Teleseminar Interviews on the Shift in Action part of the IONS website at noetic.org. You will be interested in other movies and videos about the perils and potentials for humanity moving toward a brighter future.

Meetings and Conferences

We participate in various conferences. Some examples are a meeting in 2007, Imagination, Consciousness and the New Science: Opening New Doors of Perception, and the 7th Bial Symposium in Porto, Portugal, March 2008. In Munich, GCP’s principal analyst, Peter Bancel, gave an Overview of the GCP, available on Youtube. The annual meetings of the Society for Scientific Exploration, usually in late May or early June, and the Parapsychological Association, usually in Early August, are favorite venues. For details see the scientificexploration.org and the parapsych.org websites. Both organizations need and deserve support — they provide a forum for forefront research.

Conditions of Use

Dr. Roger Nelson is the author of most pages and analytical presentations on the GCP site proper. All materials on the website are protected under copyright law and are © Roger Nelson 1998–2015, all rights reserved, for the Global Consciousness Project, its data, materials, and presentation—our website's contents and design, its elements and its look and feel are all proprietary to the Project and may not be copied or reused without the explicit written permission of the Project Director unless otherwise noted. Acknowledgement and datelines are given when material is included from other individuals (e.g., some of the architecture and programming documents, and a number of the analysis pages). Interpretations of GCP data that are not acknowledged on the GCP website may not be attributed to the GCP. A discussion of our expectations and policies on intellectual property is included in the GCP planning documents. We do not endorse nor contribute to any other project or website that uses the phrase Global Consciousness in its name. We do provide a list of general field colleagues and a list of links to philosophically aligned sites, and we note erroneous information circulated about the GCP below and at the top of this page, when we become aware of it.

Brief excerpts of the material on the GCP website may be used in scholarly work and in professional reportage, if accompanied by appropriate source and credit information including the web address: http://www.global-mind.org/. As a precondition for participating in interviews or filming of our work for TV or radio specials and programs, we require an opportunity to see what the program does with the GCP work before it is put into final edit, and this requirement also applies to the use of materials from publications and web pages describing the GCP. The intent of these conditions is explicitly to allow fact checking, and to ensure an opportunity for a fair response to criticisms or skeptical commentary, if such are to be included in the program.

If you have further queries, or would like to be on our email list to receive occasional informal updates on the project, please send an email note to the Project Director from the email address we should use, or enter that email address in the subscription form on the GCP home page.

Privacy policy

We collect data only from random number generators, not data about individual people. We run data analytics on our web site to assess its operability, and some scripts to provide functionality like displaying the menu and collecting Egg data in response to a data request. We do not use cookies. For the people who contact us and/or who sign up for news, we send communications only in response to a specific request or an inquiry, or if we have a legitimate question. We do not sell email addresses to third parties. We do not send solicitations or employ any kind of advertising, although we do accept donations. If you send us a donation, of course we will write to thank you, unless you ask us not to.

Roger Nelson

Notes and disclaimers

From time to time situations arise in which the GCP’s work is misrepresented in one way or another, whether by accident or otherwise, and when we become aware of such occurrences, we will note them here. We will also strive to maintain notice of such misadventures, given the longevity of both electronic materials and the persistent circulation of inaccurate information.