barbarian, the witch, the Jew, the communist, the spy, the woman, the homosexual, the alien or
the terrorist, the principle remains the same: it is easier to unite the population against
something than to help them build unity and create for something.
- Art objects: their existence comes from a creative impulse and from a pact of Quality signed
with the Universe. This is the very essence of Art. Art-objects are projections of our desires
within time that we create as a natural outcome of living a full and vibrant life. As if we are
unfolding a carpet in front as we walk, we orient our steps on soils that we manifest. Projects,
other than just surviving, that include works of art, music, supporting human rights, or the
enhancing our happiness belong to this category. While, yum-yum and monster objects are
created by people in reaction to our world, Art-objects are offered by creation. Holoptical
architectures – natural or reconstructed via technology – facilitate their existence (see MMOGs
below). Some are static and defined a priori (project, strategic plan, model, melody, etc…),
others are emerging, i.e. produced a posteriori as a constantly updated collective
representation tool produced by the sum of individual interactions – they are the new object-
Arts of holopticism. Knowledge trees, also explored below, are one of the first examples of
such art-objects.
Attraction and repulsion objects (yum-yum and monster) are indisputably the most archaic variety,
which probably originated in the first positive sum economies in the animal and human worlds.
Made to create the world, Art-objects are permanently reinvented, nourished by their own creative
nature. They are updated, destroyed, replaced, and reincarnated in much the same manner as
Tibetan sand mandalas. They are 'Whole for All' where interiorities are connected with one another.
They build the world in which they will live. For these reasons, Art-objects are not rational: what
rationality could explain human rights or entice us with a vision of an ideal world?
Collective Intelligence as a discipline needs to provide a framework about how to objectivize, play
and represent each of these objects-link within its artificial and virtual spaces.
Social networks, small worlds and tipping points
No more than 'six degrees' (actually 5.5) separate us on average from any person on the planet.
The 'friends of our friends' are 2 degrees away from us, the 'friends of our friends of our friends' are
3 degrees away, and so on. The structure of human social networks must be very peculiar in some
way so that six billion individuals are at least separated by so few degrees from one another. When
we say that we live in a small world, we don't realize how true this is.
Why do some rumors gain ground and not others? What principles make and destroy fashions?
Why do certain books become best sellers and not others? Why do some diseases become
epidemics and not others? Why do some ideas emerge everywhere almost at the same time? It is
precisely due to the direct consequence of ours being a ’small world.’ Under certain conditions
some 'agents' such as viruses, ideas, signals, fashion, behaviors, etc… can spread like wildfire
after they have reached what is called a tipping point. When the 'viral agents' are concepts and
ideas they are called memes by analogy with the genes that are transmitted by filiation or
contamination in the living world (R. Dawkins). The songs we hum, the fashion, slogans and our
vision of the world in general are as many memes that are transmitted by 'mental contagion'.
Humanity is not the only structure to possess such properties of proximity. The brain, the world
wide web, the food chain in the ecosystem, trading networks, or epidemics exhibit similar patterns.
Many networks having specific yet similar topologies whereby all agents are in close proximity with
all others have an extraordinary potential for synchronicity and a capacity to work in unison when
subject to slight differences in the underlying variables.
The study of such particular yet universal networks fall into a category that can be called the
'theory of small worlds'. This science of ‘memes, also known as memetics, is a mix of graphic
theories and sciences of complexity.
Copyleft 2004 - Jean-François Noubel – jf TheTransitioner.org page 22
Collective_Intelligence_Invisible_Revolution_JFNoubel.odt
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