Thinking Together

The essay argues that civilizations hit an "information scaling threshold" where the complexity of their information environment overwhelms their ability to make sense of it, and that the internet has pushed modern society past this point. It cites Shin et al.'s 2020 study of the Seshat database, which found that societies that fail to develop new sensemaking methods collapse. The author proposes three trends for coping: a "second brain" for personal thinking, Dunbar-scale "cozyweb" communities of up to about 150 people, and collective intelligence emerging from networks, which the author calls egregores. The piece also points to a shift from closed platforms to open protocols.