By jf 03/09/2014

Collective intelligencecir.institute /collective-intelligence/

Collective intelligence exists as a natural property of the living, and it has become a new research discipline.

This page gives an overview. From there you can navigate many topics and branches, and come back to explorenew directions.

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Contents [hide]

1 Collective intelligence as a property of the living

2 Collective intelligence as a research field

3 Collective intelligence addresses some of the most crucial questions of our times

4 Different forms of collective intelligence

4.1 Swarm Collective Intelligence

4.2 Original Collective Intelligence

4.3 Pyramidal Collective Intelligence

4.4 Holomidal Collective Intelligence

4.5 Collective intelligence in the plant world

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4.5.1 Related Posts

Collective intelligence as a property of the livingNo life could exist without collective intelligence. Collective intelligence of cells and many microorganisms(bacteria, archaea) that compose the bodies of animals and plants. Collective intelligence because of thecollaboration that exists between individuals and between species.

The word “intelligence” expresses a property that nobody can confine into a single definition. For this samereason, we cannot enclose collective intelligence inside a definition. However we can reference manifestationsof collective intelligence.

For instance, collective intelligence manifests itself when a group of individuals organizes itself in order toachieve a goal together (teleonomy principle). Note that we don’t specify which individuals and how many. Acollective begins with two and up to millions of individuals such as plants, animals, humans, or microorganisms(cells, bacterias, viruses…).

Examples: an ant colony cutting and insect into pieces, a group of dolphins hunting a school of fish, treesproducing together a toxic substance to discard predators, bacteria communicating together to adapt to theirenvironment, a jazz band playing music, a company making business, the scientific community sharingknowledge to make new discoveries. Collective intelligence operates at micro scales (microbial intelligence) andmacro scales (ecosystems, large corporations, cities, countries…).

In every case, a whole composed of individuals emerges and operates more or less like a single living entity,with different degrees of success.

Collective intelligence also relates on the principle of positive sum economy because individuals obtain a higherbenefit operating together than if they remained alone. For instance a pack of wolves can catch preys that runfaster and have a bigger size than an individual wolf ; an ant colony can capture and kill big and fast insects (andsometimes animals) that no ant alone could ever reach.

Collective intelligence as a research fieldAs a research discipline, collective intelligence consists in understanding how life builds social organisms andsocial intelligence. What forms of collective intelligence exist? How do they operate? How do they interact? Whatpotential limitations do each of them have? How do they evolve? What new forms of collective intelligenceemerge in humanity today? How should we build the next organizations?

Collective intelligence provides us with a technical language for social engineering. We cannot make airplanesfly by using conventional language, for this same reason we cannot build evolved collectives without a specificontology.

Collective intelligence addresses some of the most crucial questions ofour timesHunger, poverty, unsustainability, war, healthcare, illiteracy, pollution, global warming, consumerism… All theseissues lead to one single common question at their core: our capability to build human organizations that nolonger create such outcomes. Our main stake consists in collective intelligence.

Today large organizations (governments, corporations, administrations…) encounter insurmountable difficultieswhen dealing with the complexity and the unexpectedness of the world. They undergo conflicts of interest in

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many areas – between profitability and sustainability, secrecy and transparency, values and value, individual andcollective dynamics, and knowledge fertilizing – that opens – and competition – that closes.

Every medium and large organizations have in common an infrastructure based on pyramidal hard-coded socialmaps, a chain of command, labor division, and a monetary system built on debt and scarcity. Until recently, thissocial architecture was the only one at our disposal to pilot and organize big complex human edifices. We call itpyramidal collective intelligence. This form of collective intelligence has a poor capacity to adapt, to learn, tothink in non-linear ways, to address fractal complexity, to reconcile individual and collective interests, to play forthe commons rather than their own survival interests.

Can humanity build agile, learning, flexible, innovative organizations? Organizations that operate at a local andglobal level at the same time, that can thrive as a social organism and serve the whole web of life, that don’tcreate winners on one side and losers on the other, that reconcile individual and collective interest? Canhumanity build these win-win-win, wisdom driven organizations?

From what we observe through the next emerging forms of collective intelligence, we say yes. As a researchfield, collective intelligence gives us a resounding yes too.

Different forms of collective intelligenceFour different forms of collective intelligence co-exist in the animal and human word: swarm, original, pyramidal,holomidal.

Swarm Collective Intelligence

Swarm collective intelligence caracterizesgroups composed of a hight number ofindividuals: social insects (ant, bees, wasps,termites) through eusociality, big herds,flochs of birds, schools of fish. Read more…

Original Collective Intelligence

Original collective intelligence consists insmall groups composed of highly specialized individuals. Examples: wolves, dolphins, big cats, apes, humans,geese, ducks.

Read more…

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Pyramidal CollectiveIntelligence

Pyramidal collective intelligence allowedhuman species to build large collectives viathe leverage of centralized power andchains of commands. Examples: armies,governments, corporations, churches,administrations, NGO’s. Read more…

Holomidal CollectiveIntelligence

This form of collective intelligence appearedvery recently in the early 2000 and growsextremely fast. Distributed, agile, based onleadership, Internet, it supersedes pyramidalcollective intelligence. Read more…

Collective intelligence in theplant world

Intelligence in the plant world remains afertile field of exploration. A field that wecannot address from an animal-morphicpoint of view. For instance, as animals, wetend to link consciousness with a singlebody. But what does make a body? A singleplant? An essence?

We will leave this question aside for themoment.

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