over and over again. Through the discovery yesterday of 
     the railway, the motor car and the aeroplane, the physical 
     influence of each man, formerly restricted to a few miles, 
     now extends to hundreds of leagues or more. Better still: 
     thanks to the prodigious biological event represented by 
     the discovery of electromagnetic waves, each individual 
     finds himself henceforth (actively and passively) 
     simultaneously present, over land and sea, in every corner 
     of the earth.

People of literary and critical bias find the shrill vehemence of 
de Chardin as disconcerting as his uncritical enthusiasm for the 
cosmic membrane that has been snapped round the globe by 
the electric dilation of our various senses. This externalization 
of our senses creates what de Chardin calls the “noosphere” or 
a technological brain for the world. Instead of tending towards