With the invention of writing, man entered
the era of the territory. Signs engraved on By civilization we mean a human settlement with the
physical supports were first used for following criteria:
counting, managing, norming, laying down
the outlines and the surface of a territory,
 urban concentrations
 work specialization
list, defining belongings and exclusions as  writing as an accounting and memorizing
well as permissions and restrictions. technology
 commerce, sustained by a fiduciary technology
For the first time, a message was able to  an extended geographical area
circulate without being physically attached to  centralized powers
its issuer. The qualifier, the fact, the  a culture
counting, the law, the description, etc…
were objectivized in the circulating object This is where pyramidal collective intelligence is
bearing symbols. This sealed the object- launched.
signifier-signified trio. There are heated debates about additional criteria
such as expansion and hegemonic will as another
This symbolic labeling of the world was also remarkable characteristic of civilizations. Let's keep
applied to humans themselves. Thus name, with this minimal shortlist on which most specialists
profession, qualification, wealth, facts, seem to agree.
misdemeanors, caste and lineage became
important attributes that positioned an As for the State term, we will refer to its archaic forms
individual in the social geography. Writing is, (undifferentiated executive, legislative and religious
in essence, the core technology of the State. powers) as well as its contemporary ones (separation of powers). Here again, there are many contradictory
Equipped with this extraordinary capacity to
definitions regarding the dynamics and ultimate
finalities of the State.
send signifiers over long distances toward a
virtually unlimited number of recipients, pyramidal collective intelligence was launched and gave
birth to civilizations and their States.
The four dynamic principles of pyramidal collective intelligence
Four fundamental principles constitute the universal signature of these human edifices, no matter
whether these are companies, administrations, governments, armies, religious organizations or
empires. These are:
1. Labor division: everyone has to cast himself in a predefined role in order to make people
interchangeable. An immediate corollary is the division of access to information, which
establishes a context opposed to holopticism, i.e. panopticism – controlled and partitioned
information – that we will detail later;
2. Authority: from divine right, by filiation, by merit, by expertise, by law, by diplomas, etc…
No matter the legitimating principle, authority institutes a pawl effect, a dissymmetry in the
information transmission between the emitter and the receiver, and sets up a command
and control2 dynamics (C2). Authority determines the rules, assigns rights and prerogatives,
organizes the territories (and thus labor division), and distributes wealth by means of
money;
3. A scarce currency: money is historically a social convention and an information system
made to allow the market to function. It serves as a medium of exchange and a store of
value. Unlike what many people believe, scarcity is not an inherent quality of money, but an
artificially maintained property. Scarcity generates channels of allegiance from those who
need toward those who have. It naturally catalyzes the hierarchies of pyramidal collective
intelligence. This phenomenon of hierarchization is strongly accelerated by the Pareto
2 It is necessary here to make a distinction between authority and leadership. Authority is a dominating and controlling position that is
generally institutionalized (a General, a faculty dean, a CEO, a patriarch, a State President, etc…), whereas leadership is a recognized
quality within the community, it doesn't necessarily involves a determined social status and can be questioned at any moment (the term
natural authority is also used).
Copyleft 2004 - Jean-François Noubel – jf TheTransitioner.org page 10
Collective_Intelligence_Invisible_Revolution_JFNoubel.odt
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