> a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the result of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence? I think

> a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the result of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence? I think the two are interrelated, and maybe one might be a function of the other– that is, "society's intelligence" is a function of the operations we can perform unconsciously. We are more intelligent than before because we don't have to reinvent everything from scratch, we can build on what others have learnt and discovered before us.