Abstraction Layers

Hierarchical layers of abstraction are used to differentiate and simplify activities required to operate biological, engineered, and social systems, that are large, deep, and complicated.

Some examples include the Internet protocol suite (Wikipedia), the human visual system (Wikipedia), or animal motor control (Wikipedia) systems to walk, or swim, to play baseball. Or for another kind of example, the psycho-social-political layers needed to run a company, or town, or country.

We situate Massive Decentralization near the bottom of a number of abstraction layers (Wikipedia). Consider the following example.

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In this example, The Meta Project is a Network composed of Actors and their Projects.

Massive Decentralization is used by some of the Actors to Federate. Massive Coordination might be a slightly higher layer, which helps organize the coordinated federation towards larger goals, expressed as a Mosaic or a Tapestry of work towards a desired state.

"Other Kinds of Coordination and Decentralization" represent other potential ways Actors might be gathered together, Federating either individually or en masse with the other Actors that are using Massive Decentralization.

Additional higher layers (represented here with the simple name, "usability layers") will help the network handle more complicated political-style and economic-style interactions both within the network and with external forces. They will also provide help to people and groups who are trying to fit in and work within the network, with training, guidance, and support.

The Lionsberg Actor provides centralized stewardship and helps the network manage the process of emergent coordination and informed followership / citizenship in both The Meta Project and the larger world.

Finally, "meta project-like activities" occur within and outside the formal network. To the extent these activities drive the goals of the network forward, they might be, or might not be, consider to be part of The Meta Project. They may Federate informally with other Actors, or they may not.