@blaine @robin

The idea of a punctuated equilibrium in organic intelligence and complexity … our planet being right in the middle of a Big Ol’ :exclamationmark: … it’s one I’ve entertained on my own, imagining I might have somehow noticed a pattern that nobody else was talking about.

And now I’m finding more and more people who appear to have arrived at a similar theory, similarly “independently”-ish, and we’re all more or less contemporaries.

I’m feeling like my mind is connecting with some Big Cyborg Energy here.

@blaine @robin

"Polycentric governance involves similarly overlapping and intersecting institutions that act independently from one another, typically with local knowledge (essentially “using the world as its own model,” which contrasts with bureaucratic legibility), and interact in ways that are typically more robust and (empirically) more effective."

#GoodNotPerfect coalitions of service providers are feeling these pressures now, interested to hear about the empiric part of more effective.

@blaine @robin

I have been interested in this exact topic for over a decade now.

I frame it as advances or evolution of communication, in a physical and social sense. Also as the retention, organization, and sharing of knowledge.

The logarithmic advances might be: first our senses evolved, then, spoken language, then, tabulations, then written language, then printing press, then by telegraph, and then by radio and television, and now by the Internet.

@blaine @robin
In 1854, Abraham Lincoln wrote: "The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves—in their separate, and individual capacities.”

This seems very much in line with the "measure of collective intelligence" in the second paragraph of the Leonard/Levin paper quoted by @robin

Government as a means for fostering "collective intelligence?"

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/26339137221083293

@blaine @robin
Because " No matter how you set things up, the server can ultimately change the rules," we should design systems that limit the scope of control for any one server.

I think this means that servers should be limited in the specific service they provide and that we should have more, more specialized servers while relying on client-resident code to define more of any particular application.

https://berjon.com/internet-transition/#fn-12:~:text=No%20matter%20how%20you%20set%20things%20up%2C%20the%20server%20can%20ultimately%20change%20the%20rules.