Intelligence is the ability to solve problems with currently available information. Consciousness is the ability to be self aware which enables far more complex problem solving that intelligence. Individual consciousness and collective intelligence are in conflict. There is always a delay between individual ability to understand and the collective ability to create.

Individual humans have the capacity for consciousness, but they can only create real change when as a collective. Also our consciousness – wisdom and abstract thinking – depend greatly on the collective education, exchange, and culture. Culture being a collection of wisdom, often simplified, over hundreds of generations.

In simple words – an individual is smarter than a collective, but the collective is more able than an individual. Also the collective makes the individual smart, hoping that in return the individual slightly increases the collective smart. The main difference being that individual has consciousness while the collective never had and never will have consciousness.

As automation in a system – a collective – increases it should strive towards automating intelligence while it uses more of individual consciousness. Openness is a tool to achieve this. Openness allows individual consciousness to influence the collective intelligence. The more open a system, a collective, is, the more it will use individual consciousness to increase its own intelligence.

One of the challenges of the human conditions is to find our own voice. Finding a voice is a way we communicate with subjects – ourselves, people close to us, and the society. Our voice is different from our identity. It is a form of communication – a visual, a sound, speech, an action. Our voice is confirmed by a change it causes, it is a method by which we exercise our power. Our voice defines our identity.

We all have a voice. An engineer designs blueprints, a rapist is violent, an artist makes art, a parent screams, a nurse speaks kindly. We can have many voices for different goals and subjects. Every voice offers an opportunity for our development. Each change created by a voice is a reward. We develop in a direction for which we are most rewarded.

Without a voice we are isolated from ourselves, from those around us, and from the society, and our development regresses. Being denied a voice means that we are denied power. We can be denied a voice directly or indirectly. While direct denial is an obvious form of violence, indirect is more covert and its definition is changing with culture and technology.

Because our voice is part of a human condition, it is important that any system facilitates development of voices and that it eliminates their denial. If a system deliberately or accidentally denies voices it will regress.