"Is it possible the collective consciousness of a group of individual beings to become a singular self-aware consciousness?"
Hard to say.
I guess we are even unable to define "consciousness".
As an atheist with naturalistic world-view I would say our whole mind, self-awareness and all, is the product of billions of neurons changing states and transmitting signals.
So I guess If we could scan every state of every neuron in a brain and every connection between, and then build a simulation of this in a super computer: we would have a self-aware human consciousness along with every thought and memory "living" in a main frame.
Expanding this thought further, if all that matters are "states", "state changes", "connections" and "rules" it dosn't matter if the states are hold by neurons, silicium chips or trained monkeys.
So I guess If you have billions of people (each one representing a neuron), with mobile phones (possible connections) and a defined set of rules (like: "If you are called by 20 people in 1 houre call this 10 people") for every one, then this giant heap of connected humans will work as a self-aware consciousness.
(I guess this also known as the chinese room or something).
But it all depends on the rules, you can also have millions of connected neurons, each one working perfectly fine, and all you get is a brain damaged handicapped.
Nations and societies have far less complex connectivity then a brain. And no need for self awareness (which is the result millions of years of evolution in a social environment).
So the connections in a nations are rather more like the metabolic ways in a bacteria.
