His concern with the physical earth, or the biosphere without humans, was with the fact that it was indeed spherical, and so precluded an endless radiation of humans from a starting point. Our species, therefore, covers the earth like a film. We can no longer live in isolation. Those familiar with the work of E. O. Wilson with ants and termites will be familiar with the concept of the supra-organism. An individual termite plucked from the colony is no more capable of individual existence that would be one of our toes severed from its home base.
Termites can only exist co-dependently in a colony.
But there are other significant truths about supra-organisms. There is also the rigorous hierarchy, regulated by pheromones, that keeps each sub-unit doing its required task. Information, he insists, is everything that is known collectively, and as such it exists in no fixed place. Knowledge, on the other hand, is what exists in an individual's head. But, a momentary breakdown of cultural restraints demonstrates that we are still capable of quite appalling behavior.