Pierre Lévy (Speech at the Doors of Perception 3 Conference)

Table of Contents:
Summary
The Hypercortex
A Day at the Stadium
Preys, Territories, Leaders and Subjects.
Tools, Stories, and Corpses
Money and Capital
The Scientific Community and its Objects
Cyberspace as a New Object of the Collective Intelligence.

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Summary
Achieving sustainable development will demand collective, co-ordinated, intelligent action on a larger scale than human beings have ever attained in the past. Pierre Lévy, author of Towards an Anthropology of Cyberspace, delves into the workings of what he terms collective intelligence and analyses its emergence in cyberspace from an anthropological perspective. Lévy makes a distinction between many-to-many communication structures (MOOs, MUDs, newsgroups and others) of the WorldWideWeb, and one-to-one (telephone) and one-to-many (television) communication structures of other mass media. In many-to-many communication, messages are not simply forwarded or broadcasted. Interaction occurs within a situation that every participant is constantly helping to stabilize or change. This gives rise to a new and fundamentally different, virtual `meaning world.' Lévy uses the analogy advanced by philosopher Michel Serres of a soccer or rugby match to explain how collective intelligence emerges around `objects' that are virtual embodiments of power relations, preys and territories. Such objects, as well as the spontaneous synergy of skills with which human beings collectively respond to them (like the rules and playing of ball games), are unknown to animals, he says. Lévy considers cyberspace to be humanity's most recent major manifestation of a collective intelligence-inducing object. But how can we make the transition from collective intelligence to intelligent collectives? What new objects might help us cope with the increasingly large scale of the problems confronting us?

For the first time in human history, cyberspace, as it is now coming into being, creates the possibility of very large-scale communication without mass media. In regular mass media (with a communication structure of `one-to-many') we see a clear separation between emitting centres and isolated, passive receivers. Messages spread by the emitting centres achieve a crude form of cognitive unification of the collective by establishing a common context. But this context is imposed and transcendent; it does not result from the activities of the media participants and it cannot be negotiated by the receivers among themselves, `horizontally'. The telephone (a one-to-one communication structure) does allow for a reciprocal mode of communication, but without permitting a global vision of what is going on in the network as a whole and without providing the opportunity to build up a common context.

By contrast, everyone in Cyberspace is potentially at once a receiver and emitter, and this in a space that is at once qualitatively differentiated, flexible, ordered by the participants themselves and explorable. The World Wide Web is a carpet of signification, woven by millions of people and constantly being returned to the loom. Out of this permanent, ongoing connection of millions of subjective worlds (Websites) arises a dynamic, common, "objectivated", and navigable memory. One also finds landscapes of signification emerging from the collective activity in the MUDs or MOOs. On a slightly less sophisticated level, one also finds memories of communities generated by the Internet News groups, the ever-changing list of which forms a dynamic map of the fields of interest of various lively communities. In the best of circumstances, these set-ups are like living encyclopaedias. Here, one does not encounter people through their name, geographic location or social standing, but according to their focus of interest and on a common landscape of meaning or knowledge.

The shared characteristic of these new forms of collective intelligence is the many-to-many communication structure. Cyberspace offers co-operative instruments (though still somewhat primitive, these are constantly increasing in sophistication) for the construction of a common context among numerous, geographically dispersed groups. Communication unfolds to the full extent of its pragmatic possibilities. It is no longer a matter of simple forwarding or broadcasting of messages, but of interaction within a situation that every participant helps to stabilise or change; of a parley about meanings; of a process of mutual recognition of groups and individuals through the activity of communication. The main thing here is the partial objectivation of a virtual meaning-world which participants can share in and re-interpret within many-to-many communication set-ups. This dynamic objectivation of a collective context is an operator of collective intelligence, a living bond doubling for a common memory or a common consciousness. A living subjectivation emerges in response to a dynamic objectivation. The common object dialectically sustains a collective subject.

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The Hypercortex
The sharing and passing down of a collective memory is as old as humanity itself. Lore, skills, and wisdom are handed down from generation to generation. Progress in communication techniques, starting with the ability to write things down, up to the registration of sound and moving images, have vastly increased this common stock of knowledge. Nowadays, the information and other material generally available on-line or in Cyberspace does not only consist of the usual de-territorialized "stock" of texts, images, and sounds, but also of hyper-textual opinions on this stock, and of vast data-bases with an autonomous power of inference, as well as computer programs which can be used for all kinds of simulations. The collective memory put into action in Cyberspace is a dynamic, emerging, co-operative memory, reworked in real time by interpretation, and must be clearly distinguished from the traditional handing down of stories and skills and the static registrations stocked in public libraries and archives.

One of the most distinct peculiarities of the new collective intelligence is the acuity with which it is reflected in individual intelligences. The acts of humanity's psyche become almost tangible to individuals. Certain forms of virtual worlds make it almost possible to express, and to visualise in real time, the various components of a collective psyche.

The excitement aroused by the Internet is due every bit as much to the dazzling sensation of plunging into a common brain as to its utilitarian potential for information search. To navigate in Cyberspace is to get a conscious look at a chaotic interiority, to perceive the continuous, low rumble of a ceaseless agitation, the platitudes and global lightning flashes of the collective intelligence. Access to the intellectual workings of the whole informs the workings of each individual part, be it a group or an individual, which in its turn nourishes Cyberspace in its entirety.

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A Day at the Stadium
How are we to make the transition from collective intelligence, which is inherent in the human condition and culture in general, to that of intelligent collectives, which deliberately enhance their intellectual resources in the present? How to build up a community in a flexible, vibrant and inventive manner, without basing the collective on the hate of everything foreign, or a mechanism of victimisation, or a relation with some kind of transcendental law or person? How can we harmonise the deeds and the resources of the participants without at the same time submitting them to some alienating exteriority? Such a system cannot be created by decree and good will alone is far from enough to make it happen.

The French philosopher Michel Serres has opened our eyes to some fundamental anthropological phenomena at work in the stadium. Let us take a soccer or a rugby match as our example. Let us listen to the sound rising from the grandstands. The supporters of the same squad are all shouting almost the same things at the same time. Individual acts are next to impossible to distinguish; they fail to merge and become either history or memory. The individual is drowned in the mass of supporters, in the background racket produced by the crowd. We know the collective intelligence of this crowd to be notoriously limited, whether inside the stadium or at the gates.

Let us now take a look at the playing field. Each player takes actions which are clearly distinct from those of the other players. Nonetheless, the aim of all these actions is co-ordination -- to make sense in relation to each other in an attempt to provide a response. As opposed to those of the supporters, the players' actions do take place within a collective history, and tend, each individually, to influence the outcome of a yet undecided match. Every player must pay attention not only to what the opponents are doing, but also to what happens in his own team, lest the moves attempted by his team-mates be made in vain. The game is "under construction".

The spectators have no influence whatsoever on the spectacle that has brought them together. They share the same role in relation to a point which is outside their reach: the playing field. The connection -- the spectacle of the match -- is transcendent with regard to the individuals constituting the collective. To be a community on the grandstands means to be for or against; to be on one side; to love the home team and boo the opponents.

However, on the field itself, hatred of the other team alone is not enough. One must observe, guess, predict, understand its actions. And, first and foremost, one must be able to co-ordinate one's own actions in real time. One must react properly and rapidly, "as one man", however large the team is. Now, this shaping into spontaneous synergy of skills and actions is only made possible by the ball. On the playing field, social mediation casts off its transcendence. The connection between individuals is no longer out of reach. On the contrary it is in the hands -- or rather at the feet -- of all players. The living unity of the players organises itself around an immanent linking object, a moving centre that designates one player after the other as the group's temporary pole. Through the circulation of the ball, the intelligent group of players becomes its own reference. The spectators need players, but the teams do not need spectators to play soccer or rugby.

The players transform the ball into both an indicator that circulates among the individual subjects, a vector enabling everybody to designate everybody else, and the main object, the dynamic link that binds together the collective subject. We will take the ball as a classic example of the linking object -- the object that acts as catalyst of collective intelligence. I would like to propose the hypothesis that such an object, which I shall henceforth simply call the object, is unknown to animals.

* * *
Preys, Territories, Leaders and Subjects.
Higher mammals, and especially the social apes from whom we descend, do not handle objects. They do however, handle preys, like all other animals. In a certain sense, a prey is a proto-object. Hence, hunting can result in (a form of) co-operation. A prey that has been captured may provoke rivalries or fights. It is therefore a primitive operator of socialisation. But the prey's fate is to be eaten, and hence incorporated and finally absorbed into a subject. Do we see players carve up, share out among themselves and finally devour the ball they have just got ahold of?

Animals also develop strong bonds with territories, as each community defends its own against incursions by neighbours. Dogs, cats and many other animals mark their territory with their body odour. Birds do the same with their song. Why, then, is territory not an object? Because it functions on the basis of exclusive appropriation and identification. You will never see a player putting a flagpole into the ball and then claiming it as his exclusive property. In order to fulfil its anthropological role, an object must pass from hand to hand, from subject to subject, and must be secure from territorial appropriation, from name identification, from exclusivity as well as from exclusion.

Finally, social apes also maintain relationships based on hierarchy, which plays an essential role in regulating their interaction. The dominant individual plays a unifying and co-ordinating role by inhibiting mutual aggression, by focusing the attention of all members of the pack on himself, and by forcing upon it major policy-decisions (regarding hunting, migration, etc.). But in a soccer game, neither the dominant individual nor the submissive follower are objects. The soccer ball does have some affinity with the relationship of dominance since it is both subjugated and the centre of attention. In a certain sense, it substitutes by turns for the master, subordinate or victim, but it does so by virtualizing them. Yet, far from establishing some fixed relationship of dominance, the ball maintains a co-operative (between the team-mates) and a competitive (between the opposing teams) relationship which is both open and egalitarian. The match is unburdened by any instituted hierarchy: it has been suspended by the circulation of the ball.

The link with the object results from a virtualisation of predatory relationships, or of those pertaining to dominance or exclusive occupation. The finger indicates the victim, points out the dominant subject, designates the prey or delineates the territory. The fool looks at the finger and the finger becomes the object.

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Tools, Stories, and Corpses
The ball is a remarkable embodiment of the idea of an object. It is very typical of the object's humanising function, as a propensity to play games is one of the chief characteristics of our species. No animal plays collective ball games. Animal games are usually simulations of fight, hunting, dominance or sex, where bodies are directly engaged without the mediation of an objective intermediary. But there are other types of object, corresponding to a greater or lesser degree to that ideal type so well represented by a soccer ball. Especially worthy of mention are tools, material or artefacts passed on in the course of collective work; stories from an immemorial past, handed down from one generation to the next by word of mouth, and thereby transformed, as each link in the chain listens and the recites in its turn; and we can also mention the corpse, one of the most ancient objects -- the object of funeral rites.

What identifies the object is its power to catalyse social relationships and induce collective intelligence. In the case of tools, this means technical intelligence and co-operation; with the circulation of tales, it is the collective inventivity of myths, legends and folklore. The corpse is linked to ritual and to what we nowadays call religion, an archaic but powerful form of collective intelligence.

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Money and Capital
Within a capitalist system, money undoubtedly constitutes one of the most effective objects. If everybody was to keep his or her money in a private safe, the contemporary economic system would suddenly collapse. By contrast, no catastrophic consequences would ensue for agriculture if all landowners retained the ground they hold. Fluid, shareable and anonymous, money is the antithesis of territory. This is exactly the meaning of the famous dictum that money doesn't smell. No individual, however repulsive, can taint money by his identity or actions. Money exists unto itself and derives its positive economic value exclusively through its circulation. Money is the tracer, the carrier and the regulator of economic relationships. Money is not wealth, but the virtuality of wealth.

* * *
The Scientific Community and its Objects
The scientific community is yet another intelligent collective unified by the circulation of its objects. In general, these objects are being studied "for their own sake" in a disinterested way, in the sense that scientific objects are neither territories nor preys; nor are they subjugated or revered. Such objects are the outcome of the dynamics of a collective intelligence which virtualises certain particular manifestations (for example, observation results, experiments or simulations) in order to give tangible existence to substantial issues: an electron, a black hole, a certain virus.

Circulation has a constitutive influence for both the object and the community. A phenomenon revealed in a research lab only becomes `a scientific fact' if and when it is reproduced (or at least, is reproducible) in other research centres. A lab that no longer accepted and accommodated instruments and experimental protocols -- in other words, the scientific community's objects -- and ceased to dispatch them to other labs, would cease to be an active member of the scientific community. Scientific ingenuity really consists of making new objects appear, objects that are liable to arouse the interest of intelligent communities, which in turn will circulate, enrich, transform or even multiply the original objects and in doing so will alter their own identity within the scientific community. This game is co-operative and competitive at the same time. Actions are "built up" upon previous actions, establishing a complex irreversibility in the process.

* * *
Cyberspace as a New Object of the Collective Intelligence.
Cyberspace's ongoing spread is undoubtedly the most recent major manifestation of a collective intelligence-inducing object. What makes the Internet so interesting? Merely stating that it has an `anarchistic' quality is a crude qualification of the current state of affairs. Cyberspace is a shared dynamic object that can be fed by all the people who make use of it. The origins of its non-separate character are probably to be found in the fact that it was developed, extended and improved upon by computer scientists (who were also initially its largest group of users). Cyberspace derives its status as a link from being the shared object of both its makers and its explorers.

Cyberspace provides objects that circulate among groups; memories that are shared; communal hypertexts for building intelligent collectives. It should be clearly distinguished from television, a medium that never tires of indicating people in power and victims to a mass of segregated and powerless individuals. And it should certainly not be confused with its perverse double, the much-vaunted `electronic superhighway', which evokes a territory instead of shared objects. The electronic superhighway metaphor degrades what was a circulating object into an appropriable thing. The ferocity of the discussions about whether the Internet should or should not go commercial has profound anthropological implications. The community that made the Internet into what it is now prides itself on having invented, together with a new object, a new way of intelligent community-building. The issue therefore is not whether to ban commercial activities from the Internet (why should we?) but how to safeguard an intelligent way of building intelligent collectives, different from what capitalist market forces alone would produce. Cybernauts do not need money since their community already has at its disposal a constitutive object, one that is also virtual, de-territorialized, link-producing and cognitive by its very nature. On the other hand, Cyberspace is perfectly compatible with money or any other suitable mediator and will even give a massive boost to the virtualising effectiveness and circulatory speed of scientific and monetary objects.

The functioning of an object as a mediator of collective intelligence always presupposes the existence of a contract; of rules-of-the-game; of a covenant. But a contract or a rule alone is never sufficient to make collective intelligence emerge. What is rare is not the signing of a contract or the establishment of a rule, but the birth of an object. To give but one example: there could be no scientific objects without rules and conventions on method, but it is a great deal easier to banter around epistemological recipes than to make one true scientific discovery!

One could recount the history of humanity from its very beginnings as a succession of emerging objects, each of them inseparably linked to a particular form of social dynamics. One would then observe that every new type of object induces a particular brand of collective intelligence and that every truly important social change necessarily involves the invention of an object. In the span of anthropological time, collectives and their objects take shape within the same general movement. By the scale of circulation and the sheer size of its objects (be it those of Cyberspace, the economy, or techno-science), the human species, alone in the whole animal kingdom, tends to merge into one single community. Collectives possess only the intelligence of their objects.What new objects might help us to cope with the increasingly large scale of the problems confronting us? These objects bearing the future, vectors evoking collective intelligence, must render conscious to every individual the collective outcomes of his or her acts. Capable of evoking immensity to individuals, they will also have to involve each and everybody and to take into account each particular locality within the dynamics of the whole. Objectivity on a planetary scale will only arise if it is sustained by all; if it is able to circulate amongst nations and if it enables humanity to enrich and increase culture.

Earth of the clouds and chaotic weather; Earth of the quakes; Earth of the elephants and the whales; Earth of the Amazon and of the Arctic; Earth over-flown by satellites, Earth so immense and serene: isn't the Earth the big, blue ball we need?