Collective intelligence depends on material infrastructure beyond human minds

Evidence

David Weinberger’s choice of words nevertheless leads us to glimpse a third axis of the politics of the ground, which is perhaps more important. It is in fact essential that we extend what we mean by ‘the room’ beyond the human figures who are in it to include the assemblage of furniture and buildings that enable these people to demonstrate their intelligence together. The people sitting by the radiator will lose a great deal of (the use of) their knowledge if the internet connection stops working or the heating breaks down in the middle of winter. Our collective (human) intelligence would be nothing without the relational ground that allows it to continually (re)constitute itself, through countless forms of exchange with its material environment. The room is more than the sum of its bipedal inhabitants: its collective intelligence is also based on the tables, chairs, floors, cables and pipes – in short, on a whole material infrastructure saturated with human understanding and practices, which have been accumulated over the centuries but which are dependent on continual communication with our non-human environment. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 554

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the ‘ground/figure’ attention metaphor to non-human materiality — resonates with ecology-of-things and new-materialist arguments in Latour and Bennett’s Vibrant Matter. — connects to: Collective intelligence exceeds any individual’s without erasing individual expertise — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 552; Core human task groups of four to six evolved to distribute cognition; Once cooperation stabilizes, prediction signals and self-awareness accrue — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 461 (+4 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the trees-as-infrastructure piece: material environments (roots, cables, pipes) are the unnoticed ground conditioning collective intelligence, exactly as tamarisk trees and bark cloth condition livelihoods.

Broader Connections

• Attentional alignment with others generates communal powers no individual could reach alone #qualifies (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 111
• Collective intelligence exceeds any individual’s without erasing individual expertise #qualifies (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 552
• Core human task groups of four to six evolved to distribute cognition #exemplifies (0.75)
• Once cooperation stabilizes, prediction signals and self-awareness accrue #expands (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 461