Mycelium is Earth’s natural Internet.

Paul Stamets, an American mycologist and popularizer of fungal ecology, has used the metaphor of mycelium as a planet-spanning communications network in talks and writing aimed at general audiences. The phrase “Earth’s natural Internet” reflects his long-running effort (from the 1990s onward) to explain how fungal mycelial networks permeate soils and connect plants, microbes, and nutrient flows, especially through mycorrhizal associations. In this public-facing context, the “Internet” analogy serves as an accessible way to describe distributed, resilient, branching networks that transmit chemical signals and resources across ecosystems, and to argue for fungi’s central role in forest health and planetary resilience.

The quote frames mycelium—the filamentous body of fungi—as a vast, decentralized network that links living systems. Like the Internet, mycelium is portrayed as distributed (no single hub), adaptive (constantly growing and rerouting), and information-bearing (via chemical signaling and ecological feedback). Stamets’s point is less about literal cognition than about connectivity: fungi help mediate exchanges among plants and soil organisms, influence nutrient cycling, and can propagate signals of stress or opportunity through shared underground pathways. The metaphor elevates fungi from “decomposers” to infrastructural engineers of ecosystems, encouraging readers to see forests and soils as networked systems rather than collections of isolated organisms.