effect (the more we have, the more we earn) that we will explore later;
4. Standards and norms: they allow the objectivizing as well as the circulation and the
interoperability of knowledge within the community. Language is itself a standard. As for
circulating artifacts (electronic components, pieces of machinery, materials, etc…) they all
have a 'jointing pattern' made to chain their added value and build more complex functional
sets3.

The strength and the stability of organizations built on pyramidal collective intelligence largely stem
from the fact its four founding principles mutually reinforce and legitimize themselves. Wealth is
distributed by those in authority, hierarchies are catalyzed by scarce money, inclusion-exclusion
rules are established by standards and norms, and so on.
Today pyramidal collective intelligence still drives most aspects of human organizations. From the
point where the number of participants and the intervening distances exceed that inherent in
original collective intelligence, this basic form of such intelligence is no longer possible. By
organizing and synchronizing communities based on original collective intelligence, pyramidal
collective intelligence has permitted creating and governing of cities and countries, invention of
aircraft, launch of satellites into space, establishment of gigantic armies, conducting musical
symphonies, discovery of vaccines, etc…. Furthermore, during the past 120 years, the rapid
growth of telecommunications has significantly increased the growth in and power of this form of
collective intelligence.
As a master in the science of economies of scale, pyramidal collective intelligence excels in
piloting repetitive processes of transforming power applied to a given raw 'mass' such as matter,
population, data, etc… in order to generate added value. Assembly lines, teacher training,
administrations, armies, marketing, commerce, politics, mass medias, computers, etc…, all these
domains are structured around these universals about economies of scale. Even the most abstract
consulting company today, whose mission statement is to produce knowledge from its social
capital, is structured in such a way that these economies of scale and repetitive pattern principles
can be applied. These are the foundations – often raised to the level of a dogma – of our present
economic paradigm.
Limits of pyramidal collective intelligence
Of course pyramidal collective intelligence has also its limits: unlike original collective intelligence,
it shows a structural incapability to adapt to the unsteady, unpredictable and disruptive grounds of
complexity.
Cross-out qualities, which are strengths in more simple environments, underlie its inherent
weaknesses:
 Work division: the social architecture (organization charts, job descriptions, information
access levels, etc…) is hardcoded. There is no way this structure can self-modify when
confronted with changing circumstances, for example as in the case of a sports team.
Whatever the efforts made to improve and optimize the flow of information, the intrinsic
limits of hierarchized structures will always show up, with their pawl effects and their
dynamics made of territories and prerogatives;
 Authority: top management, nearly always reduced to ruling minorities are by nature
unable to perceive and process the tremendous flow of information that pours into the large
body of the organization they are supposed to manage. This generates reductionist visions
that become a source of conflict between the 'head' and the base;
3 We are not going to detail the difference between 'norms' and 'standards' here. We could also talk about 'culture', a larger and more
evocative universe, but this concept remains too approximate and subject to contradictory interpretation in which we don't want to enter
for now.
Copyleft 2004 - Jean-François Noubel – jf TheTransitioner.org page 11
Collective_Intelligence_Invisible_Revolution_JFNoubel.odt
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