Emergent intelligence - and rhetoric?

The always challenging weblog Global Guerrillas has an interesting post on "emergent intelligence"

Emergence is the phenomenon where a large number of individual entities and their actions contribute to a larger phenomenon, like the neurons - in themselves pretty simple - that forms the complex human brain - or a flock of birds that turns and flies in a pattern with no central coordination.

John Robb over at the Global Guerillas sets up a description on how intelligence on a tactical scale among insurgents in Iraq can form a larger "intelligence community" or "intelligence output" that can be utilized by whoever has been in contact with the separate entities themselves. He writes: "Rather, it is a form of group intelligence that learns, achieves goals, and engages in self-preservation."

The thought of emergence is wildly puzzling. As I am writing on propaganda right now it seems that this might be a concept that would be worth investigating more. In my research I have come up with a model where you can separate two levels of description "demagogy" and "propaganda". Emergence could explain how the individual statements ends up forming a debate "climate". In the same line of thought it could explain the interaction between individual and ideology.

Hereuka!

Unfortunately I'll have to turn in my dissertation on Wednesday, so I think it is a fair assumption that I probably won't have time to integrate a whole new, social-scientific theory into my humanistic project.