The pyramid structure that seems to permeate all things //system// has the following salient feature. Say a system pawn is a node at level $L$ and his/her boss is at level $L+1$ and the boss' boss is at level $L+2$. Depending on social skills and intelligence, the pawn might have information about "what is going on" at level $L+1$ by talking to the boss, but for sure he/she has //no// information about what is going on at $L+2$. In a way secrecy (i.e. information non-awareness) is the //essence// of the pyramid.
Assange has this paper [1], which talks about information being the perfect way to choke the system.
[1] cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf
[ abstract: Consider the Gonspiracy G = (V,E) where V is the
set of conspirators and E is the set of inside information links.
The conspiracy G is embedded in a larger graph, society, S.
Let |G| be the power of the Gonspiracy. The 'good guys'[2] want |G| to be small, the bag guys want |G| to be large. Assange defines the total conspiratory
power as
|G| = sum information flows in e for all e in E
So to fight G, one must either cut edges e, or generally
reduce the flow of information flowing on edges, by
scaring the nodes {v \in V} that they might be found out.
]
The pyramid structure that seems to permeate all things //system// has the following salient feature. Say a system pawn is a node at level $L$ and his/her boss is at level $L+1$ and the boss' boss is at level $L+2$. Depending on social skills and intelligence, the pawn might have information about "what is going on" at level $L+1$ by talking to the boss, but for sure he/she has //no// information about what is going on at $L+2$. In a way secrecy (i.e. information non-awareness) is the //essence// of the pyramid.
Assange has this paper [1], which talks about information being the perfect way to choke the system.
[1] cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf [ abstract: Consider the Gonspiracy G = (V,E) where V is the set of conspirators and E is the set of inside information links. The conspiracy G is embedded in a larger graph, society, S. Let |G| be the power of the Gonspiracy. The 'good guys'[2] want |G| to be small, the bag guys want |G| to be large. Assange defines the total conspiratory power as
So to fight G, one must either cut edges e, or generally reduce the flow of information flowing on edges, by scaring the nodes {v \in V} that they might be found out. ][2] http://markpasc.org/blog/gems/athena.html