Swarms and pyramids
The ideas below are from an insightful cover story by Robert Moran in the September 2012 MENSA Bulletin.
The Swarm and the Pyramid: These two organisation models are competing to shape the future. Understanding the shifts explains a lot about what has been happening in the first decade of the new century.
The pyramid is the traditional, top-down hierarchical social structure, with leaders and followers. A small élite sets policy and directs large specialised groups of workers and suppliers. In history, emperors and kings were at the top of the power pyramid. Today it is presidents. Theocratic pyramids were organised around the idea of divinely-inspired order; popes, cardinals and bishops ruled.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, industrialisation reinforced the power of the pyramid. It was very effective and relatively efficient. In the 21st century, the pyramid continues to dominate, though despotic rulers and religious hierarchies are starting to topple.
The swarm is built on the individual self-organising through technology, resulting in swarming behaviour (similar to bees). It is organised bottom-up with like-minded individuals based on common interests.
The swarm depends on effective communications tools like Twitter, Facebook and Internet blogs. It experiments, fails and grows by learning quickly. Examples are Wikipedia, Wiki-leaks, flash-mobs, software communities and activist online groups like Anonymous.
The swarm model is effective with rapid experimentation and innovation
It supports the expressive needs of the fast-expanding creative class, is extremely agile and learns quickly. But, its weaknesses include fracturing over interpretation of ideas, and it is very dependent on fast and effective communications and lacks the focus of determined leaders.
The pyramid can use its resources and its hierarchy to implement plans
Most of its weaknesses are the inverse of the swarm. It tends to be slow to experiment and innovate and is dependent on far-sighted leaders to survive its accumulating defects.
In the first part of the 21st century, the battle lines are drawn. The swarm attempts to overwhelm the pyramid by coordinated assaults through disobedience and disruption. It attracts new members by criticising the actions of pyramid leaders and leverages the creative strengths of its members to out-maneuvre pyramid leadership. The swarm attempts to eliminate or re-organise the pyramid, but then fragments with no defined leadership or governing structure.
Today, most thinking people prefer the participatory swarm over the hierarchical pyramid. It is hard to imagine that one will prevail through elimination of the other. Indeed, the likely model that will emerge is a pyramid core surrounded by swarm functions.
These concepts explain the Arab Spring and many similar political rebellions in the Mid-East and elsewhere. They also illustrate the weaknesses of pyramid-based organisations when high level defects are hidden with secrecy.
Tomorrow’s world
Dr Michio Kaku is a well-known futurist and professor of theoretical physics. Here are some of Dr Kaku’s thoughts and predictions.
Every 18 months, computer power doubles (Moore’s Law), so in eight years, a microchip will cost only a penny. Instead of one chip inside a desktop, we will all have millions of chips in cars, appliances, clothes. By 2020, the word ‘computer’ will have vanished from the English language – everything will be smart.
In Kaku’s latest book, Physics of the Future he predicts driverless cars by 2020 and synthetic organs by 2030. DNA chips inside toilets will sample blood and urine and report cancer, maybe 10 years before a tumour forms.
Artificially intelligent doctors will appear on the wall when needed. The body will be scanned with a handheld MRI machine, which will analyse the results to provide a diagnosis that is 99% accurate.
In this augmented reality, blink-and-go-online will change everything.
Students will look up the answers to tests while taking them. Actors will read from their scripts while performing onstage; foreigners will translate their conversations instantly; and speech-makers will never need teleprompters.
These gadgets seem decades away but Kaku insists that they are coming very, very fast. The military already has a prototype of the contact lens called Land Warrior, a helmet with an eyepiece that allows the wearer to see the entire battlefield – friendly forces, enemy forces, artillery, aircraft, everything – just by flicking it down over the eyes. Propelled by advances in nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and biotech, the world will become a fully globalised civilisation by 2100.
Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator, writer, technology futurist and angel investor. His popular e-mail newsletter, JimPinto.com eNews, is widely read (with direct circulation of about 7000 and web-readership of two to three times that number). His areas of interest are technology futures, marketing and business strategies for a fast-changing environment, and industrial automation with a slant towards technology trends.
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