# Coordination Substrate **Domain:** Infrastructure / Collective Intelligence **Doc Type:** Concept **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[Coordination Point]], [[Temporal Synchronization]], [[Distributed Intelligence]], [[Infrastructure as Governance]], [[Schedule and Loop]] ## Definition A coordination substrate is the shared temporal, communicative or institutional infrastructure that allows separate agents to discover one another and act together. ## Schedule–Loop Context A common day, network protocol or public forum can function as such a substrate. Because collective intelligence depends on coordination, the design of shared timing is also a question of agency and governance. ## Backlinks - [[Schedule and Loop]] - [[articles/Schedule and Loop|Schedule and Loop]] - [[Russia and Prussia Kybernetiks]] ## Relationships - **Edge Annual Question source relationship:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] preserves the annual-question source corpus from which a proposition-specific quotation is connected to this entry. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "The collective perception of the world mind is also relatively well developed. The most important recent innovations have been search and recommendation engines, which combine the inputs of humans with machine algorithms to produce a useful result. This is another area where scale helps. Many eyes and many judgments are combined into a collective perception that is beyond the scope of any individual. The weak point is that the result of all this collective perception is just a recommendation list. For the world mind to truly perceive, it will need a way of sharing more general forms of knowledge, in a format that can be understood by both humans and machines. Various new companies are beginning to do just that." > **— W. Daniel Hillis**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Information/The World Mind Needs Knowledge Humans and Machines Can Share by W. Daniel Hillis|The World Mind Needs Knowledge Humans and Machines Can Share by W. Daniel Hillis]] > "Human achievement is based on collective intelligence — the nodes in the human neural network are people themselves. By each doing one thing and getting good at it, then sharing and combining the results through exchange, people become capable of doing things they do not even understand. As the economist Leonard Read observed in his essay "I, Pencil' (which I'd like everybody to read), no single person knows how to make even a pencil — the knowledge is distributed in society among many thousands of graphite miners, lumberjacks, designers and factory workers." > **— Matt Ridley**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Civilization/Civilization Is a Network No Individual Understands by Matt Ridley|Civilization Is a Network No Individual Understands by Matt Ridley]]