A phase transition for civilization > “By holos I include the collective intelligence of all humans combined with the collective behavior of all machines, plus the intelligence of nature, plus whatever behavior emerges from this whole. This whole equals holos.” > “This is the time when inhabitants of this planet first linked themselves together into one very large thing. Later the very large thing would become even larger, but you and I are alive at that moment when it first awoke. **Future people will envy us, wishing they could have witnessed the birth we saw.**” A phase transition means the underlying rules of the system change. Kelly argues that the holos is creating a new state of being where old cultural forces are losing their power. > “In this new regime, old cultural forces, such as **centralized authority and uniformity, diminish** while new cultural forces, such as the ones I describe in this book—**sharing, accessing, tracking—come to dominate** our institutions and personal lives.”