What is your understanding of the idea of “self-awareness”?
The definition that you supplied: “Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals” sounds about right to me. By that definition, the internet would only be self-aware if you include the internet’s architects and users as part of the internet (as you did above). It is not surprising that a system that contains rational agents as a part of itself is self-aware; many an inanimate object could be considered self-aware if we consider its builders and users as a part of it—for example the three examples I listed previously would be self-aware given that consideration. But, in the case of the internet and in the cases of my examples, it is the intelligent agents that provide the self-awareness; so self awareness is an attribute of the intelligent agents rather than of the internet per se (or the encyclopaedia per se, etc.).
The definition that you supplied: “Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals” sounds about right to me. By that definition, the internet would only be self-aware if you include the internet’s architects and users as part of the internet (as you did above). It is not surprising that a system that contains rational agents as a part of itself is self-aware; many an inanimate object could be considered self-aware if we consider its builders and users as a part of it—for example the three examples I listed previously would be self-aware given that consideration. But, in the case of the internet and in the cases of my examples, it is the intelligent agents that provide the self-awareness; so self awareness is an attribute of the intelligent agents rather than of the internet per se (or the encyclopaedia per se, etc.).