The brain at the edge
Traditionally, organisations collected information at their edges, where they intersect with the outside world, and then interpreted that information centrally, with the CEO at the heart making the final judgements. But in an automated organisation, this analysis and pattern-finding can be done instantly by machines, and the results can be distributed instantly. So in the organisation of the future — rather like today’s most advanced armies — everyone in the field will have the kind of ‘general’s overview’ that used to be available only to the privileged few at the centre. If knowledge is power, power will be everywhere: is that utopia? Or anarchy?