Today pyramidal collective intelligence still drives the vast majority of human organizations. By organizing and synchronizing communities based on original collective intelligence, pyramidal collective intelligence has permitted creating and governing of cities and countries, invention of aircrafts, launch of satellites into space, establishment of gigantic armies, conducting musical symphonies, discovery of vaccines, etc…. It has allowed the rise of civilizations.
Furthermore, during the past 120 years, the rapid growth of telecommunications has significantly increased the growth and power of this form of collective intelligence.
Contents
Strength
Numbers
The strength of pyramidal collective intelligence mostly relies on its capacity to assemble and synchronize large numbers of people, up to millions in the case of administrations and armies. The biggest companies employ more than 400,000 employees (ICBC, China).
Stability
The stability of organizations based on pyramidal collective intelligence largely stems from the fact its founding principles mutually reinforce and legitimize themselves. Centralized power can control the allocation of wealth and maintain a level of scarcity that keeps hierarchical principles alive. A scarce currency, via its Pareto effect creates a dynamics of concentration of resources leading to concentration of power. And so on.
Predictibility
Pyramidal collective intelligence has invented linear time and made it one of its cultural foundations. Linear time allows synchronization of actions and the making of predictions in the future.
Predictibility implies we operate in a world with limited randomness and chaos. Pyramidal collective intelligence has transformed its environment and the planet to make it “less alive”, more “mineral” therefore more predictable.
