'Conscious' Saturday afternoon

I sat through a lecture couple of days ago. This management consultant and motivation 'guru' among many things said about the 'age' we live in. He said that the days of agrarian scociety and the industrial age were over (that we all know!) and information age is also drawing to a close ( that phrase caught my attention). The age that is coming up is the age of 'consciousness'. And that statement got me thinking.

Is there something called global consciousness? Does consciousness exist only in the realm of consciousness. Can only man (and as extension living beings) experience consciousness?Is there a way where effect of consciousness can be studied scientifically. Suddenly I was all enthusiastic. Choosing the easiest way to check for related information, I decided to google. A little bit of googling gave me links some of which i have pasted below.

1. Wholla! there is something called the Global Consciousness Project.( and I thought this line of thinking was novel :( ) Experiments on this have been on for quite sometime and the site is pretty interesting.
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
A little more googling gave a summary of the GCP
http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=126649#121

Now, armed with the knowledge that there are people out there thinking like me and humbled by the fact that they have been scientifically researching this for over a decade I decided to checkout the next question? Do only living creatures (plants included here) experience consciousness ? Well a little bit of googling and here it is.

2. Water crystals show differing patterns while freezing when exposed to different thoughts.
http://www.intelligentinfinity.org/watersenses.html


I would love to be Fox Mulder and would 'want to believe' in this but the skeptic in me was trying to find a rational reason.
http://www.skepticnews.com/2005/02/rednova_news_ca.html

And one link that summarized it all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Consciousness_Project

A lazy Saturday afternoon spent with a mug of hot coffee and googling has left me where I started. Wondering about Consciousness. But the search has been worth it, enriched with a couple of links, the journey has but, just begun.