The new millenarianism of which I have been writing lately is based on two trends: the rapid spread of democracy, and the tendency of democracies in recent times to govern themselves more sensibly. These should not be seen as separate and randomly generated developments, but rather as stages along a continuum of inevitability, driven by the vast amounts of information now coming under the command of the individual, instead of centralized authority.

I have described the evolving digital network of multimedia personal computers, each capable of resolving information in any form into a binary code and sending it to one or more others via fibre optic cables, where it may be reconstituted in the same or altered form. Not only can each personal computer call on the information provided by all the others, but on its own can store and manipulate whole libraries.

There are two effects at work here. On the one hand, the extraordinary expansion of his capacity to work with information clearly exalts the individual. The shift away from resources to knowledge as the basis of wealth creation displaces economies of scale in favor of the creativity of the individual human mind as the arbiter of economic success. But more important, perhaps, is the integration of each of these minds through the network of interactive computers.

RECREATING BRAIN PROCESSES

The most advanced work in artificial intelligence is being carried out by ''connectionists,'' who are essentially trying to recreate the processes of the brain. They arrange information, like the nerve cells that transmit and store the impulses of brain activity, in neural networks. Logical connections between cells that work are built up; those that do not are broken down. What we are creating by linking all these computers is a neural network writ large, in which each computer is a cell, with information flowing between and among them through their fibre optic links. We are making a mind of society itself.

We already have a model for this: the market. Combinations of buyers and sellers, of capitalists and laborers, are established through the information signals of the price system. Those that work - that produce mutually beneficial results - are retained, those that do not are dissolved and recombined in other ways. The market learns in this way; its thoughts are the economic output of society.

It's only natural that the first concrete applications of computer networks should be felt here. Just as capital markets have become computerized, putting every buyer and seller in communication with every other, so competitive markets throughout the economy may be transformed into the same sort of hyper-efficient electronic auctions - instantaneous price adjustments, no shortages or surpluses - eliminating the usual imperfections associated with the costs to consumers of shopping around. A San Francisco company, Marketel International Inc., is developing the software to do just that for airline tickets, and there is no reason this could not be extended to any standard good.

But wait a moment. If individuals can exchange and compare information on prices so easily, what would happen if they did the same with political ideas? Most bad policy is the result of what I call ideological bundling. Since individuals are ordinarily unable themselves to process and comprehend the scattered array of information that might come to bear on a given political choice, the voter must rely on a sort of brand loyalty to bundles of policies marked ''left'' or ''right,'' whether or not he agrees with each policy on its merits, and whether or not they should logically be bound together.

Progress depends on breaking down these bundles into their component parts. If individuals are to be given autonomous mastery of large quantities of information, if they no longer are simply identified by their group affiliation, nor respond to tribal appeals, then policies might be detached from their bundles, their separate merits weighed and similarities noted, and reassembled into more focused and coherent packages.

The great policy successes of recent years have been ideas that could not be placed in either bundle, or perhaps belonged in both. Tax reform was one such idea; sustainable development is another. I suspect the guaranteed annual income will be the next. Political exchange in a neural network of individuals offers the chance to engage the whole of society's brain on a problem, rather than just the right side or the left.