I think people who are interested in this subject should look at Sensorica and open value networks. Self-organizing structures are not necessarily the most eff

I think people who are interested in this subject should look at Sensorica and open value networks. Self-organizing structures are not necessarily the most effective structures because they are given form by the information technology that the agents are using and are shaped by the constraints placed by the environment. When there is no mold (the information technology is too shapeless - human speech or something like forum software) then the whole thing will essentially implode once the information grows out of bounds for every individual to keep up with all of it (delegation and separation of concerns is not explicit so it doesn't happen so readily). Coming up with a sensible communication system that gives shape to organization without restricting the freedom of the agents is an interesting 21st century problem that should get more attention. When people say that no structure works with few agents it has to do with the fact that humans, when in small groups (tribes), establish informal hierarchies that are very fluid and natural. However at larger scales the group needs to be fragmented into several factions which are also ranked, sometimes explicitly, it becomes important for individuals to signal a visual indication of rank or somehow show which group they belong to (this can be seen throughout history, I recommend a book called "The Dominant Man: The Pecking order in Human Society"). I think the trick is to try and create an "unstructured" network out of units that are small enough that they don't reach the threshold of needing formal structure, these cells can be informal and comfortable (tribes) but compose to create the organisation. Effectively this means thinking of 'two pizza teams' as individuals when organisations are at scale and abstract out the individual as just a member of his team. Giving the team complete autonomy over how it handles its internal affairs and only judging it based on the work it produces i.e. as an "individual".