[pacala]

Judging by the relative success of biological and social systems, systems that communicate effectively with each other end up much smarter than systems that don't communicate as effectively. Smarter as in winning the competition for resources more often.

The big question is whether we can build systems that communicate, but don't create vast disparities of information between overminds and everybody else. At this point the handful of information slurping mega-corporations have a huge information advantage compared with the average person. If nothing changes, this is the end of the humanistic world order based on the primacy of the individual brain.