From collective intelligence toward a (global) Collective Intelligence

Down through the media, overhead machineries will make us hear the voice of the multiple. Still indiscernible, soften by the hazes of the future, flooding another humanity with its murmur, we have an appointment with the surlanguage. — Pierre Lévy – "Collective Intelligence"

Mankind, by its very nature, is always in search of a higher level of consciousness that allows him to guide and understand his present condition. This quest happens at the individual level as well as the one of the entire humanity.

The original collective intelligence transcends and includes the individual. Transcends in the way that a differentiated emerging entity appears, and it includes the individual in a harmonious relationship that makes him evolve and provides him with meaning.

It seems that neither the pyramidal intelligence nor the swarm intelligence have proved to be able to transcend and include the original collective intelligence. These two forms of large scale collective intelligences appear like transitory and necessary steps in the evolution. Today, everything seems to show that THE transition toward a new level of consciousness at the humanity scale – and not only in small groups – is at work.

Let's note first that the two limitations of the original collective intelligence are fading quite quickly. Communities with a very high number of people at a large distance between one another begin to possess, with slight differences, a good part of the properties of the original collective intelligence.

What should be added to the seven constituent characteristics of the original collective intelligence so that we can shift to a global Collective Intelligence (from tens to millions of people) that transcends and includes?

Here it is:

8. A sufficient currency?: the gift economy doesn't need to be regulated by accounting processes at the scale of small groups. When it comes to large groups of people, a monetary information system becomes necessary. "Monetary" in the way it acts as a medium of exchange and store of value; thus we are playing with circulating currencies, not scarce, but sufficient and available in real time. This point will be detailed later.

9. Standards? and norms?: just like in the pyramidal intelligence, standards and norms remain indispensable to organize the cohesion and the degree of permeability and interoperability of large communities. But in the case of the global Collective Intelligence, they are issued from ascending emergence processes. Their function aims at maximizing the interoperability and the capability to build functional ever more complex sets rather than seeking hegemonies in competition contexts.

10. An information system?: by playing a role in all the properties listed here, it is used to organize and optimize the symbolic space shared by the community. It interconnects our senses via more and more powerful and extended interfaces, it builds and presents digestible synthesis, it processes complex calculus, simulations and anticipations that neither our senses nor our intelligence are able to achieve, it organizes and indexes the collective memory, it counts the monetary transactions, it applies the social contract, it rebuilds artificial holoptical spaces where the real proximity space is not sufficient anymore, it puts people in relation with one another according to polymorphism?'s needs, it connects us to the cyberspace.

11. A permanent interpenetration with the cyberspace: no community today can pretend to be smart if no exchange dynamics is at work with the cyberspace. There we find the most advanced knowledge, the most achieved experiences, the best practices, and then it is our turn to deliver our experience, to link with others… and doing so we give resonance to this echo chamber of the humanity.

This mutation toward Collective Intelligence cannot happen without a deep individual and societal transformation. Who is me, and what happens to us?

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