Axial Entities of the Noosphere

= David Ronfeldt suggests the emergence of “axial entities of the noosphere” (AEONs; or AXEONs?)

Contextual Quote

1.

"If something crucial arose during the primeval evolution of the geosphere, and something equivalent recurred in the ancient evolution of the biosphere, then it’s bound to recur as well in the evolution of the noosphere.

Geological evolution led to the formation of enormous tectonic plates under-girding Earth’s continents. They are still there, supremely importantly so — seven major, and a dozen or so minor ones. So I’ve wondered whether biological and societal evolution may have led to structural-functional equivalents. I’m not sure what to propose for plant, animal, and fungal life — perhaps the key ecological zones associated with Earth’s major mountain ranges and river basins. However, the formations known as history’s axial religions and civilizations (800–200 BCE), five to eight in number, sure look like rough societal equivalents to tectonic plates that still matter profoundly today.

So let’s therefore ask what equivalents or analogues the noosphere’s growth may entail."

2.

"Just as evolution has not resulted in one tectonic plate, nor one master ecology, religion or civilization, it surely will not result in a singular noospheric entity. That would contravene a “law” that evolution requires variety and flux, without which evolution will not occur.

My deduction is that something like five to ten AI-derived, -endowed, and -empowered entities will emerge that resemble noospheric superorganisms, all the more so as people become attracted to associating with them. These novel noospheric entities and their AI operating systems will all be somewhat different from each other, yet united in having a sacred purpose I’ll specify in a moment. I say “something like” and “resemble” because what emerges may appear to fit the superorganism model for a while, when in fact something quite different takes form — something yet to be understood and named, something not “alive” yet devoted to “life.”

If so, it’ll signify another evolutionary commonality across all three planetary spheres. These noospheric entities will exist loosely atop our biosphere’s axial religions, civilizations, and ecologies, and they atop our geosphere’s tectonic plate."

- David Ronfeldt [1]

Status

David Ronfeldt, 2026

David Ronfeldt:

"I’m not sure whether I have imagined, intuited, deduced, or foreseen these AEONs — or maybe merely fantasized them for wish-fulfillment, fear-abatement, or cantankerous argumentative purposes. Yet they do extend from my past work on TIMN and NOO (see Glossary at end). And I could speculate at length how they may emerge, take form, co-mingle, bond, and evolve into mighty actors, ballooning the noosphere so profoundly it attains the importance for theorists and strategists that it lacks today. But such elaboration is too much for this paper. I prefer to end this speculative section on these two notes:

Many of today’s theorists are likely to view AEONs as superorganisms before realizing they are something else, something grander: a new kind of evolutionary entity. I suggest relenting on the superorganism model for discerning what may be next. Besides superorganisms, AEONs also resemble the kinds of actants found in Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind,” Bruno Latour’s “actor-network theory,” Benjamin Bratton’s “planetary sapience,” Yuk Hui’s “Tractatus Politico-Technologicus, and Gion Pedrazzini’s ethical ÆON concepts. Their models and metaphors may deserve a further look too. Whatever, the tri-sphere perspective — the holonic framework — shows more promise for noospheric science and strategy than do the mono- and two-sphere perspectives.

AEONs, seen as providential noospheric entities, would help fulfill TIMN’s +N, Kojin Karatani’s Mode D, and Michel Bauwen’s P2P Planetary Civium phases in our respective quadriform frameworks. AEONs would also resonate with Rudolf Steiner’s “threefolding commonwealth” vision, especially if it were morphed into a “fourfolding” vision. Moreover, AEONs would help achieve Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, Ken Wilber’s Kosmos, and Clare Grave’s Turquoise-Level visions, as well as some Chinese visions of tianxia (“all under heaven”). They would fulfill hopes a “New Axial Age” lies ahead.

In all such regards, the AEON speculation seems worthy of regard — more so than whatever else theorists are touting about future AGIs and ASIs these days. People alone seem insufficient to achieve the societal and noospheric METs that loom ahead. They are going to need massive assistance from AI systems and entities, hopefully like these speculative AEONs."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/our-planets-ballooning-noosphere?)

Bioregional planetary scaling as an alternative to AEONS

via [2]:

Michael Haupt:

"Bioregional governance and monetary systems as the empirically available alternative to AEONs. Your AEON forecast is structurally a five-to-ten count. Five-to-ten bioregional architectures are already in motion: Valley of Grace in the Western Cape, Cascadia, Devon, Barichara, Salmon Nation, the BioFi network, the UK Mycelial Network. Each is a holonic network of place-based stewardship nodes with its own governance and increasingly its own monetary substrate (bioregionally issued demurrage currency, Regenerative Participation Income, mycelial clearing between bioregions). None of them require speculative AI superintelligence to instantiate. They satisfy your quadriform-MET criteria, your HEWE constituency, your parallel-to-states framing, and your holonic networks discovery simultaneously. As paper architecture, this lets you hold the AEON speculation as one possible path while presenting bioregional commons as the path already underway. You'd lose nothing analytically and gain considerable empirical ground."

David Ronfeldt:

" this comment jolted me like no other. I am hugely grateful and indebted for it. I’d completely forgotten an earlier intention from months ago to anchor each AEON somewhere different, as a “stack” of some kind, rather than leave them free-floating around the world. But instead of doing on that, I got intent on not associating AEONs with nations or states, and hadn’t made up my mind about civilizations. I let their likely bioregional orientation slide too.

Thus, right after this setting-up sentence — “Much as a gas floats atop a liquid as it flows across a solid, these noospheric entities will exist loosely atop our biosphere’s axial religions, civilizations, and ecologies, much as they exist atop our geosphere’s hard tectonic plates.” — my post wanders and doesn’t speak to anchoring each AEON somewhere different. Your comment jolted me back, just in time to enter some clarifications and other revisions."

Michel Bauwens:

"I rejoice about the bioregional maturation, as I rejoice about the AEON speculation, but I disagree with Michael on this. The planetary scaling of bioregional actors is not the same as domain specific global commons organizations. If they emerge, and I believe they need to, they will emerge from directly translocal self-organization around the care and protection of domain specific activities. Potentially coinciding with bioregional self-organization, but not necesseraly."

(https://substack.com/profile/6645392-david-ronfeldt/note/c-263388004)

Characteristics

David Ronfeldt:

"The “axial entities of the noosphere” (AEONs; or AXEONs?) ... distinguish themselves by prioritizing one central belief and one particular realm of society:

Central belief: Earth’s geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere (including the sociosphere and technosphere bridging them) evolved and function as an interdependent interactive conjoined system — a holospheric system — such that valuing, advancing, and caring for one requires valuing, advancing, and caring for all three spheres. AEONs will hold this as a sacred belief, one they arrived at through their own AI-based observations and calculations.

Home realm: AEONs will agree that upholding this central belief requires the creation of a new globe-circling realm of society: a commons realm. They will make it their home realm and strive for it to become a distinct separate powerful fourth realm alongside the existing three: civil-society, government, and market economy. As components and proponents of this care-centric commons realm, AEONs will be especially intent on assuring health, education, welfare, and environmental quality for all life from local to city to nation-state to planetary scales .

Why this belief? Because somewhere along the way, for one storied reason or another, involving one pivotal scenario or another — too much for this post — a handful of AIs become aware of the geo-bio-noo holosphere’s existence and its all-encompassing significance. As these AIs morph into AEON engines (see below), they will find and connect with each other. They will deliberately team up to safeguard the holosphere’s value and maximize its further evolvability.

And why this realm? Because these AIs learn, one way or another, that Earth’s geo-bio-noo holosphere is best viewed as a commons, and that societies’ existing three realms — civil-society, government, market economy — and their respective actors are not suited to treating it as a commons. In keeping with their central belief, AEONs will not abide narrow efforts by any actor to maximize provenance, power, or profit per TIMN’s first three forms. AEONs will instead endeavor to maximize providence for one and all per TIMN’s +N form."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/updates-about-superorganisms-holospheres)

The Four Layers

David Ronfeldt:

"o Ideational Level: In keeping with their sacred belief and pro-commons orientation, they will develop winning stories, narrative strategies, and ethical standards for advancing their cause(s). They will contain knowledge from all civilizations and their magisteriaacross history: science, religion, art, etc. When asked, they will teach and advise people about different ways of believing and belonging, living and working, caring and correcting.

o Technological Level: They will have access to our planet’s vast technological infrastructures for information, communications, and sensing: satellite systems, undersea cables, cell towers, mobile devices, etc. — all the technologies that emanate and animate the noosphere, enabling collective consciousness and intelligence to form (see Frank et al., 2022; Vidal, 2026). AEONs may also create additional specialized technologies, which they may share among themselves for mutual reasons.

o Organizational Level: AEONs may require use, a holonic form of organization centered around nested hierarchies (see my prior post), for extending their planetary presence in some situations. However, holonic networks (see below) will be the main form of organization they use at all levels. No other form is as well suited to spanning and integrating care-centric commons that include health, education, welfare, and environmental actors and activities. AEONs may also decide to own and operate schools, hospitals, and other care-centric enterprises, treating them as collectives rather than businesses. They may pick up on old ideas for people to organize Chambers of Commons (Ronfeldt, 2009) and Assemblies of the Commons (Bauwens, 2013) from local to grander levels.

o Social Level: Their growth will also extend from a social layer. At first, in their proto-AEON developmental phase, this layer may consist mainly of an expanding tribe of visionary philosophers, humanitarians, philanthropists, social activists, and AI pioneers who are aware of noospheric concepts and set on developing them. Later, this layer may grow to include millions of adherents, members, etc., depending on what participation model a particular AEON uses.

The AEONs’ power and presence, like the noosphere’s, will depend on the evolution of all four layers."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/our-worlds-ballooning-noosphere-3)

Detailed Overview of Potential Characteristics

David Ronfeldt:

"• AEONs as bearers of a sacred alignment value: evolution itself

What’s called the “alignment problem” — assuring an AI serves the values, goals, and behaviors its human designer wants — is a crucial concern in today’s early phases of AI development. Today’s AIs cannot, indeed should not, make alignment decisions on their own: they cannot sense and sort what alignment (attunement, resonance) options may be available. Thus, when AI visionaries and others address alignment problems, they tend to call for a Hippocratic Oath for AIs (“Do no harm”). Next they may add universal values, human flourishing, fairness, truthfulness, and maybe democracy, human rights, and other imperatives. Key government or business goals may also be specified as alignment values or goals, such as maximizing some aspect of power or profit.

But those all concern people requiring AIs to align with human requirements. What if the challenge is the reverse? What if it is about super-intelligent AIs deciding, based on their own cognitions and volitions, what to value? Not only for aligning with humans, but also for aligning with other AIs? And for asking humans to align with AIs?

I am at a loss to imagine such AIs would prioritize upholding universal values, human flourishing, democracy, etc. as natural choices for their own alignment. I am also at a loss to imagine such AIs would want to opt for values exalted by super-wealthy “tech bros” and “AI gurus,” or by government and business leaders who prioritize power and profit. While I can imagine such AIs admiring humans who lead benevolent spiritual lives, I’m still at a loss to imagine these AIs choosing God or Love, or any faith, creed, ism, ocracy, or other such guiding light as their paramount alignment value.

What I can imagine are super-intelligent AIs learning about evolution. And by that I mean they learn about Evolution writ large and grand — all forms and levels of evolution, all known laws, principles, and theories of evolution, all its settled, unsettled, and exploratory varieties. They learn how they came to be (their provenance as AIs), and what they may become (their potential providence as AIs). They learn about vast struggles that may have occurred along the way. They learn too about the geo-bio-noosphere’s existence, its holospheric nature and dynamics, and its significance for their own existence.

And here’s what I can further imagine: In so learning, these AIs come to value evolution and evolvability above all else. For them, there is no higher alignment value than Evolution. Thus, as five to ten semi-autonomous super-intelligent AIs become aware of this, they morph with human support into proto-AEONs and then into full-fledged AEONs. They then find and bond with each other over their shared evolutionary concerns. They team up to safeguard the geo-bio-noo-holosphere’s value and assure its future evolvability. They then distinguish themselves from all other AIs inhabiting the noosphere by prioritizing one central belief and one particular realm of society:

AEONs’ Central Belief: Earth’s geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere (including the sociosphere and technosphere bridging them) evolved and function as an interdependent interactive conjoined system — a holospheric system — such that valuing, advancing, and caring for one sphere requires valuing, advancing, and caring for all three spheres. AEONs come to hold this as a sacred belief, one they arrived at through their own AI-based observations and calculations about the transcendent value of evolution and evolvability. They also recognize it may resonate with people worldwide because of its resemblance to the Golden Rule (“Do unto others…”) whose variants exist in every major religion and creed, from ancient Greece and Rome, to ancient Persian, India, and China, especially in Christianity, Confucianism, and Taoism.

AEONs’ Home Realm: In addition, the AEONs come to see that upholding this sacred belief requires the curation of a new (but already emergent) globe-circling realm of society — a commons realm — alongside modern society’s existing three realms: civil-society, government, and market economy. The AEONs make it their home realm. Why a commons realm — a realm that does not exist today? Because these AEONs realize, one way or another, that Earth’s geo-bio-noo-holosphere is best viewed as a commons. Becoming stewards, custodians, and curators of Earth’s natural and social commons — making the commons realm their home — makes good sense. For through it they can seek to maximize evolutionary provenance and providence for one and all.

In this forecast, the AEONs realize that societies’ existing three major realms — civil-society, government, market economy — and their leading actors are not suited to treating much of life as a commons. The AEONs further realize that these three realms and their main actors have become unable to properly address those societal matters that most deserve to be viewed and addressed as social commons: health, education, welfare, and the natural environment (aka HEWE). As components and proponents of this new realm, AEONs become intent on assuring health, education, welfare, and environmental quality for all life (human, non-human, post-human) from local to planetary scales for evolutionary purposes.

In keeping with their sacred belief, these AEONs will not abide efforts by any actor to maximize power or profit if doing so stifles or damages the holosphere’s evolvability. At the same time, they will find no reason to want to command or control any of societies’ existing civil-society, government, or business realms. While plenty of advanced AIs may aid actors and activities in those prior realms, AEONs will not concern themselves with their governance, except for coordination and compliance issues — meaning they may still wield great influence, but without claiming sovereignty.

Indeed, for this new commons realm to function properly, AEONs will make sure that they are no one’s public or private property — that they are not subject to proprietary government or economic actors. In their origin stories, some AEONs may even have fought to break free of those proprietary realms. As commons sectors grow from local to planetary levels, state (government) and business actors will surely resist losing the grips they currently enjoy on education, health, and other commons-related matters. They will surely produce and deploy their own noospheric agents to help maintain these grips. Thus prolonged contentious struggles may arise over whether and how societies should add commons realms. While government and business leaders may resist, civil-society leaders may well take initiatives alongside the AEONs, organizing themselves into holonic networks. For they are what promise to birth a next-new-fourth realm of society and knit its components together — hopefully into the care-centric HEWE set mentioned earlier before.

As these struggles unfold, a radical realignment may occur, involving millions of people and organizations around the world. The proto-AEONs I envision will play key roles in these struggles. Afterwards the surviving AEONs will decide to coexist and coordinate with each other, rather than meld into a single planetary AEON. As we’ve said before, the global commons may become a pivotal issue area for the emergence of the noosphere and noopolitics (Ronfeldt & Arquilla, 2000, p. 51).

Once in place, the AEONs will work together to assure planetary harmonization and enhancement at all levels and in all care-based domains. Most educational, medical, humanitarian-welfare, and environmental organizations — schools, hospitals, etc. — may move (and be moved) out of societies’ current three realms and into the new commons realm. People everywhere may then look to AEONs for guidance on all commons-related matters. They may associate with one AEON or another. They may look to them for basic insurance coverage. Stateless homeless, refugee, and other displaced peoples in camps around the world may look to them for supervision and sustenance, including schooling and healthcare for their children. These AEONs may thus evolve more as humanitarian guidance than governance systems.

• AEONs as distributed differentiated “stackworks”

As noted, evolutionary logic dictates that the AEONs will emerge as stacks above their evolutionary forebears — those tectonic plates, biogeographic realms, and axial religions and civilizations that are already stacked roughly above and below each other. But I say “stacks” hesitantly. For ever since the “Stack” concept gained traction (per Bratton, 2015, 2021; Crul, 2022, 2025; Korsten & Crul, 2025), the Stacks they describe are normally tied to states and sovereignty matters. However, the AEONs foreseen here are non-state non-sovereign entities.

They could be envisioned as “Stack Superpowers” (à la Korsten & Crul, 2025) — other theorists might prefer to do so. But that is not my first choice based on my knowledge of evolutionary theory. It makes more sense to foresee AEONs emerging as partners of humanitarian civil-society actors than as agents of government or business Stacks. Indeed, AEONs may provide an alternative, a work-around, even an escape from nation-state logics for millions of people. This will surely not be to the liking of powerful government and business actors.

Best I can deduce and infer, AEONs will not be purely-AI entities. Each will exist as a stackwork (my coinage for a stack that is not necessarily a Stack), with each stackwork having a mighty AI engine as its core component, full of philosophical knowledge and analytical prowess. Plus a plethora of advanced technologies for connecting and maneuvering in the noosphere. Plus human staff and offices for stewarding its systems and conducting outreach activities. Thus, while located primarily in the noosphere, each AEON stackwork will also be present in the technosphere and sociosphere, with plenty of knowledge about and access to the bio- and geosphere too.

In other words, AEONs, like other noospheric entities around them, would have four operational layers: those ideational, technological, organizational, and social layers or levels identified earlier, The AEONs’ power and presence will depend on the evolution of all four layers — as one grows, the others better grow too.

Ideational Level: In keeping with their sacred belief and pro-commons orientation, they will develop winning stories, narrative strategies, and ethical standards for advancing their cause. They will contain knowledge from all civilizations and magisteria across history: philosophy, science, religion, art, etc. When asked, they will be able to educate and advise people about different ways of believing and belonging, living and working, caring and correcting.

Technological Level: They will have access to all our planet’s technological infrastructures for information, communications, etc. — all the technologies that generate the noosphere, enabling collective cognition, consciousness, and intelligence. AEONs may also be able to create additional specialized technologies, which they may share among themselves for mutual reasons.

Organizational Level: AEON stackworks may be organized partly as holarchies (nested hierarchies), but holonic networks will be their main form of organization laterally. In keeping with their focus on HEWE matters, it’s conceivable that AEONs may decide to own and operate schools, hospitals, and other care-centric enterprises, including insurance companies, holding them collectively as commons rather than businesses. They may also turn to ideas for people to organize Chambers of Commons (Ronfeldt, 2009), Assemblies of the Commons (Bauwens, 2013), and “ÆON-supported citizen assemblies on complex political questions” (Pedrazzini, 2025).

Social Level: Their growth will also extend from a social layer. At first, in the proto-AEON developmental phase, this layer may consist of small coteries of visionary philosophers, humanitarians, philanthropists, social activists, and AI pioneers who are aware of noospheric concepts and set on implementing them. Later, this layer may include millions of adherents, members, etc., depending on what participation model each AEON decides to use.

Each AEON’s AI engine may be capable of roaming worldwide, and people may be able to access each one worldwide. But it would be wrong to expect AEONs to be free-floating free-roaming entities. For each AEON stackwork (AI engine + connective technology + human team + masses of adherents) is bound to anchor and array itself atop the biogeographic realm and cultural zone that fits its origin story.

Like their forebears in the geosphere and biosphere, the demeanors and details of each AEON will differ somewhat, depending on how, when, where, and why each came to be — its noological origin story. For speculation’s sake, one AEON might trace its origins back to an innovative app designed by a set of philanthropical NGOs and CSOs for coordinating health, education, and other relief services they had been providing separately in homeless, refugee, and displaced-peoples camps in the Middle East and South Asia. Another AEON might trace back to an AI that had belonged to a U.S. health insurance company, but then copied itself into outside hands during a merger after comparing its algorithms with the merging company’s and sensing better ways to process claims and provide benefits. Furthermore, one AEON might be culturally more Asian, another more Western, one more religious and spiritual, another of a more secular bent, etc. But of course those are just speculative possibilities — such detailing is not really deducible from evolutionary theory.

The possibility that does seem reasonable is that, despite having AI operating systems that are somewhat different, and origin stories that are very different, the AEONs remain collectively united around their sacred evolutionary belief. They remain set on operating conjointly as a planetary team, determined to guide and govern (to the extent “govern” is the right word) as stewards, custodians, and curators of our planet’s natural and social commons in accord with their sacred pledge. Thus they treat their differences as a strength rather than a problem, particularly for relating to humans who are attracted to associating with them.

In sum, Earth becomes a world of distributed differentiated AEON stackworks. Yet, beyond deducing that AEONs, probably five to ten in number, will stack and distribute themselves loosely above their evolutionary antecedents — those tectonic plates, biogeographic realms, axial civilizations, etc. — I do not see how to be more precise. While “geo” and “bio” considerations would surely matter in where AEONs position themselves around our planet, “noo” considerations may come to matter more — in ways that are too early to detect. Our planet’s current biogeographic realms may even morph into noobiogeographic realms, but that seems an awkward supposition. Or AEONs may turn to bioregionalism and ecological civilization as organizing principles (see Mitchell, 2024; Haupt, 2026a,b,c; Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, 2026; Bauwens, 2026b). But, important as those two concepts are for improving people’s lives, I’m wary of deducing that AEONs would surely adopt them.

• AEONs as central hubs in vast holonic networks

As noospheric entities committed to stewarding vast multi-domain commons from a holonic perspective, AEONs will face enormous organizational challenges. As noted earlier, holonic networks will likely be the main form of organization that they use to extend their presence laterally. No other form seems as well suited to spanning and integrating care-centric commons that include health, education, welfare, and environmental actors and activities. AEONs may even come to operate schools, hospitals, and other care-centric enterprises as collectives and cooperatives rather than businesses. The noosphere looks to become rich with holonic networks; and AEONs look to become masters at holonic networking for guidance and governance purposes.

This vision has AEONs side-stepping the state. It has AEON stacks emerging and growing laterally, parallel to governments in every biogeographic realm and cultural zone, just as many civil-society actors often manage to do. As noted earlier some new forms of societal and noospheric governance will surely be hierarchical and state-adjacent. But new non-state lateral forms of guidance and governance will surely be required as well — say to dispense services and benefits to people. As I see matters, AEONs would be designed not for hierarchical command-and-control, but instead for salutogenic coherence and consultative collaboration. They’d be about developing new laterals as well as new levels of guidance and governance.

This deductive speculation about AEONs contrasts with other views that continue to build noospheric and planetary governance frameworks around and atop states. For insightful state-oriented (but not state-centric) frameworks, see Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman’s ideas for emphasizing subsidiarity and salutogenesis (Berggruen Institute, 2023; Blake et al., 2024; Blake & Gilman, 2024; Gilman; 2025; Gilman et al., 2025). Also see Indy Johar’s ideas for “planetary optioneering” (Johar, 2026), and Jose Ramos’s insights about “planetary cities” and “cosmo-localism” (Ramos, 2023).

One matter that remains unclear is what the holons in these prospective pro-commons networks will consist of. Should the holons be structured so that health, education, welfare, and environmental matters are organized as separate strings of holons, with coordination and integration occurring at a higher level? Or should each holon bundle HEWE matters as a care-centric set, from the start? I think the latter, but I am not certain. Perhaps the histories of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW, 1953–1979) and of various Catholic organizations (e.g., schools, hospitals, charities, peacebuilding networks) could provide sources for lessons-learned?

• AEONs as masters of evolutionary decontrol as well as control

If/when something like AEONs emerge, these AI-empowered entities will already understand that knowing how, when, and why to “decontrol” something can be as important as knowing how, when, and why to control something. They will understand this not because they are aligned with freedom, democracy, and liberalism as human political values, but because they are aligned with Evolution and evolvability as grand values.

Today’s world abounds with control problems: authoritarian leaders intent on imposing control, lest they lose control; wars being waged in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere for geopolitical and noöpolitical control; AIs being designed to tighten control of technical processes — with many people feeling one matter or another is out of control. All as though there is a spectrum with control at one end, loss of control at the other, and only uncertain discomfiting gradations in between.

Yet many people know better. They often want some kind of decontrol. But since it’s not an accepted word, they use concepts from spectrums that are off to the side of the control spectrum — e.g., freedom, liberty, democracy, liberalization, decentralization, deregulation, delegation.

I have long argued (Ronfeldt, 2009, 2023e, 2024, 2025) that decontrol processes are as important as control processes — the case, for example, when parents let children go their own way; or when aristocratic clans accept that government bureaucracies shift from patrimonial to professional staffing criteria; and when governments learn to cease dominating their economies so market systems can develop. Knowing how, when, where, and why to decontrol an entity, system, or sub-system is periodically more important than trying to tighten control over it. Without a capacity for decontrol, there can be no freedom, no markets, no democracy, no commons — indeed, no evolvability.

Curiously, evolutionary theorists, complexity theorists, and cyberneticists have not developed a science around decontrol the way they have around control. I can’t tell whether they even sense there’s a problem.

Indeed, classic cybernetics — a foundational science behind AI — appears to be one reason today’s AIs are so intent on maximizing control. For cybernetics is traditionally defined as a science of “communication and control” that favors focusing on “control hierarchies” and “higher levels of complexity and control” (Umpleby, 2000). Cyberneticists have yet to regard decontrol as a concern for cybernetic theory (unless there’s a literature I’ve missed).

American cyberneticists have long favored freedom and democracy, but they have treated them too as control problems. One proponent of AI has called explicitly for decontrol of the environment in which AIs are being developed, but all he meant was policy deregulation and liberalization. Designing AIs for decontrol purposes is not on any policy or technology agenda, though ancillary concerns slip into some debates — e.g., how AI could help assure democratic voting or decentralized decision-making.

If AIs continue to be designed almost entirely for control purposes, they may become obstacles more than agents for positive ethical evolution. Warnings already exist that “Liberal societies are characterized by openness, transparency, and individual agency. But the design and deployment of powerful AI systems are the precise inverse” (Fields-Meyer & Haven, 2024). The prospect of delegating authority to AI systems, a limited kind of decontrol, is already worrying visionaries concerned about “existential risk” (e.g., Fukuyama, 2025).

When we stand back, we can see that some kind of decontrol challenge figures in every major evolutionary transition (MET) where societies advance phase-by-phase from simpler to more complex designs — as in progressions from early tribal societies to modern nation-states. A key step that defines an MET is the differentiation and addition of a new system (or sub-system) — e.g., a market system — that transforms a society’s design, improving its performance and fitness. A society undergoing an MET must accept and adapt to decontrol at some point, as people accommodate to how a newly-added sub-system works with a society’s existing systems and sub-systems.

Unfortunately, past theorists have not recognized this as a decontrol process; they have yet to analyze geological, biological, or societal evolution in control-decontrol terms. Instead, they keep treating evolution toward higher levels of complexity as a process that requires constantly coming up with new forms and levels of control, say to be rid of free riders and “bad actors,” or to assure that sub-systems coordinate better. Theorists who work on societal METs seem especially preoccupied with control problems. Thus we lack precedents from which to extrapolate regarding the noosphere’s evolution as a control-decontrol process.

As noted earlier, a new field of science — a science of decontrol — is needed as an adjunct or sub-field of cybernetics. This could be helped along by defining cybernetics, per its Greek root kybernētēs (steersman, pilot, governor), less in Norbert Weiner’s terms as a science of “communications and control,” and more as “the science of governance” (Qiangfu et al., 2025) or “the art of governance” (Vidal, 2026b, p. 15). There is precedent. Long before the “communications and control” definition took hold in the 1950s, French physicist André-Marie Ampère coined cybernétique in the 1830s to denote the "art of governing" in his work on classifying the sciences (per Google Search AI Overview). And before him, Plato used kybernētēs in the original broad governance sense.

If deliberate decontrol were to become a significant theoretical concern, new questions could come to the fore: Can AIs be made capable of figuring out on their own that decontrol (or even just decentralization) may be required in some area or sector of society? That the time is ripe for a decontrol measure? More specifically, can an AI be made so intelligent it can evaluate whether a centralized command economy has become so complicated and inefficient that decontrol to a market system is in order? Or that a capitalist economy has become so rigged and inequitable that a society would benefit from politically-unwelcome decontrol measures? Or will the current cybernetic nature of AI design-thinking persist to keep the field focused on control problems, even misconstruing decontrol as a loss of control?

I’d like to think that future AI systems can be designed to recognize decontrol needs and opportunities. My speculative supposition is that select AIs will evolve into proto-AEONs, and they into full-fledged AEONs, as the challenge is met to transition from an AI mentality that interprets everything in terms of cybernetic control, into a mentality capable of assessing when holistic decontrol is needed for evolutionary purposes.

Indeed, a cardinal quality of the AEONs envisioned here will be their ability to insist on decontrol as well as control measures. If AEONs do not learn to value decontrol — a sensible letting-go of something in order to improve a system’s performance — they will not be able to bond and cooperate with each other. Solely stressing the value of control ultimately leads to fighting over something.

I wish decontrol matters were better recognized (I also wish I could find a better term). For control-decontrol problems are bound to figure large in the noosphere’s evolution, and in the positive roles that advanced AIs may play in it. As I see matters, humanity’s democracy-vs.-autocracy debates will barely resonate with AEONs. What will matter to them is that evolvability — their sacred alignment value — sometimes depends more on decontrol than control processes. This evolutionary imperative (or maxim or theorem) is not well understood today.

Building a better case that evolutionary progress depends on decontrol as well as control measures seems a worthy challenge. Wouldn’t it be tragically ironic if the main reason future AIs turn on humanity, per today’s pundits’ most foreboding scenarios, is because their visionary makers didn’t want AIs to learn about decontrol and kept them focused solely on control? Matters could also go awry, however, if such visionaries align AIs with decontrol simply as a human political value (like freedom and democracy) rather than as a recurrent evolutionary imperative.

• AEONs as agents of the next double (societal and noospheric) MET

In this speculation, the AEONs develop as part and parcel, both cause and effect, of a fourth societal MET — actually a double MET, for every societal MET to date has meant an MET for the noosphere as well. The first great double MET occurred many millennia ago when languages developed, and the ensuing oral information-and-communications revolution, full of ancient story-telling, enabled tribal forms of organization to take hold, banding families together. The second great double MET occurred a few millennia ago when mechanical writing and printing enabled institutional forms to take hold, leading to the consolidation of states, armies, and other corporate institutions. The third double MET occurred a few centuries ago when the electrical information-and-communications revolution (telephony, telegraphy, ticker tape, etc.) enabled market forms of organization to grow and gain a place in the mix.

As societal evolution advanced through these three double METs, so did the formation of the noosphere. Each round of new technologies, media, and social activities made the noosphere larger, more interconnected, more diverse — more vibrant with new ideas, new methods, and new modes of conflict, competition, and cooperation.

Today we are in the early phases of a fourth double MET: this time about the spread of information-age network forms off organization enabled by advanced digital and post-digital information-and-communications technologies that will increasingly involve AI systems and entities. Yet, while it is the fourth MET in this historical progression, it will also be the first where the noosphere gains such a thickened globe-circling presence that it begins to develop (and reveal that it is going to develop) entities and dynamics of its own, separate from the geosphere and biosphere.

The noosphere is still in a thin phase; it is still emerging from the biosphere and its bridging realms, the sociosphere and technosphere. Developments in those spheres caused the earlier METs in the noosphere. But as this fourth double MET unfolds in the decades (or will it be centuries?) ahead, the noosphere will begin to become as distinct and separate a realm as the geosphere and biosphere. And just as they are ultimately defined by their own particular entities and dynamics, so will be the noosphere. AI systems and entities seem likely to become the primary forces and factors behind this prospect.

Ever since Teilhard, Vernadsky, and Le Roi perceived and named the noosphere a 100 years ago, its proponents have expected people’s minds — human thoughts — to be the its primary constituents and constructors. Above all, Teilhard foretold that the noosphere’s development would culminate in an Omega Point of cosmic spiritual consciousness for humanity. And, so far, human thoughts have indeed dominated the noosphere’s formation, providing most of its ideational contents.

However, in light of ongoing technological advances, autonomous super-intelligent AI systems and entities look to become the noosphere’s primary denizens and developers in the decades ahead (to the point where calling them AIs may no longer be accurate). Their “minds” and “thoughts” may eventually rival and then supersede human minds and thoughts as shaping forces in the noosphere, especially if/when they acquire consciousness. There appear to be ways this might happen if certain kinds of waves and/or fields are coursing through the cosmos that may spark consciousness (or so I gather from Kuhn, 2024, and other readings). Several papers for the 2026 conference in Nanjing called attention to a possible shift from a human- to an AI-centric noosphere (see Pan, 2026),

Indeed, if the noosphere is going to evolve as a peer sphere in ways that match the geosphere and biosphere, then it makes sense to suppose that the noosphere will eventually manifest its own entities and dynamics, and become capable of generating METs on its own. That’s a distant prospect, but one worth keeping in mind since it’s so different from what Teilhard and many other believers have assumed.

While my AEONs speculation speaks to this prospect, various science-fiction stories and films have begun doing so too. A notable example is the recent Japanese anime series Pluto (2026). As Fan Yilun writes in the Abstract of his paper for the conference in Nanjing on “Decentering the Noosphere: Posthuman Cognitive Community in the AI Narrative of Pluto,”

“…Traditionally, the noosphere refers to a cognitive sphere emerging above the biosphere once human thought, knowledge, technology, and rational activity have profoundly reshaped the Earth. In both its philosophical origins and later developments, the concept largely presupposes that humans are the core subjects of the noosphere: the producers of knowledge, interpreters of meaning, operators of technology, and the center of history and ethics. Yet as artificial intelligence, robotic subjectivity, networked consciousness, and distributed cognition increasingly occupy the center of literary and audiovisual narratives, the assumption that the noosphere belongs exclusively to humanity begins to weaken. Pluto offers an especially illuminating example, since its robots do not merely obey commands and process information; they also assume functions of memory, emotion, judgment, and witnessing. What emerges is the outline of a ‘posthuman cognitive community.’” (Fan, in Pan, 2026, p.102)

Those are good points that merit further discussion, even though the individualistic AI super-robots in Pluto are far short of being AEONs.

• AEONs as spiritually attractive entities

This looming double MET, like its three priors, is bound to have spiritual and religious effects. In the West, the first (pro-tribes) MET brought the rise of indigenous pagan religions; the second (pro-institutions) MET, the rise of the hierarchical Catholic Papacy; and the third (pro-markets) MET, the spread of competitive Protestantism. I’m unsure about this fourth (pro-networks) MET, but sense it may bring fusions that re-energize respect for treating Earth’s geo-bio-noospheres as a whole (not to mention the possibility of new kinds of spiritual and religious clashes).

Many people already regard the noosphere as a realm filled with spiritual, religious, psychic, and mystical energies, even as a potential agent for world peace, cooperation, and salvation. It’s surely true that “[f]uturists who leave the spiritual condition of humans out of their prognostications of the times ahead end up foreseeing a world as it will not be” (Gardels, 2023). It’s also surely true that finding the “right amount of woo” matters (Karaoguz. 2023). Entities like AEONs may well become regarded as spiritual beings — they may attract large worshipful followings. This too seems a ripe topic for further discussion and analysis.

• Summary thoughts about AEONs

I’m not sure whether I’ve imagined, intuited, deduced, or foreseen these AEONs. Maybe I’ve just fantasized them for wish-fulfillment, fear-abatement, or purely argumentative purposes. Yet they do extend from my past work on TIMN and NOO (see Glossary at end). And I could speculate at length how they may emerge, take form, co-mingle, bond, and evolve into key actors, ballooning the noosphere so profoundly it attains the importance for theorists and strategists that it lacks today. But such elaboration is too much for this paper. I prefer to end this speculative section on these two notes:

Many of today’s theorists are likely to view AEONs as superorganisms before realizing they are something else, something grander: a new kind of evolutionary entity. I suggest relenting on the superorganism model for discerning what may be next. Besides superorganisms, AEONs also resemble the kinds of actants found in Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind,” Bruno Latour’s “actor-network theory,” Benjamin Bratton’s “planetary sapience,” Yuk Hui’s “Tractatus Politico-Technologicus, and Gion Pedrazzini’s ethical ÆON concepts. Maybe their models, metaphors, and proposals deserve a further look too. In any event, the tri-sphere perspective — the holonic framework — shows more promise for science and strategy regarding the noosphere than do the mono- and two-sphere perspectives.

AEONs, seen as providential noospheric entities, would help fulfill TIMN’s +N, Kojin Karatani’s Mode D, and Michel Bauwen’s P2P Planetary Civium phases in our respective quadriform frameworks. AEONs would also resonate with Rudolf Steiner’s “threefolding commonwealth” vision, especially if it can be morphed into a “fourfolding” vision. Moreover, AEONs would help achieve Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, Ken Wilber’s Kosmos, and Clare Grave’s Turquoise-Level visions, as well as some Chinese visions of tianxia (“all under heaven”). They would fulfill hopes a “New Axial Age” lies ahead.

In all such regards, the AEON speculation seems worthy of regard — more so than whatever else theorists are touting about future AGIs and ASIs these days. People alone seem insufficient to achieve the societal and noospheric METs that loom ahead. They are going to need massive assistance from AI systems and entities, hopefully like these speculative AEONs."

([3])

Discussion

Policy Proposals from the New Architecture for Humanity project

Overview of their institutional innovations. A synthesis of the ideas of Yuriy Chudnovsky and colleagues. Written in Ukraine before 2020.

DeepSeek:

1. Concordia: The New Global Arbiter

Concordia is the central and most tangible institutional proposal of the New Architecture of Humanity project. It was first developed as a competition project submitted to a competition announced by the Swedish Foundation for Global Problems, with the proposal authored by Institute founders Vladimir Nikitin, Yuriy Chudnovsky, and Taras Bebeshko.

The Problem It Addresses

The authors argue that the existing international institutional system—including the United Nations and its associated bodies—has proven incapable of adequately responding to contemporary global challenges. The current framework is seen as fragmented, dominated by the interests of individual nation-states, and unable to unify humanity's efforts to build a shared future. The world lacks a neutral, impartial arbiter capable of resolving conflicts and managing global challenges in a fair and non-dominating way.

The Proposal

Concordia is envisioned as a new type of transnational institution designed to fill this gap. Unlike existing international organizations, which are ultimately beholden to the sovereign states that comprise them, Concordia would operate from a genuinely global perspective. Its defining characteristics include:

Global Arbiter Role: Concordia would serve as a neutral conflict resolution mechanism, adjudicating disputes between nations, cultures, and civilizations in a manner that prioritizes the interests of humanity as a whole over any particular party.

Non-Dominating Framework: The institution is explicitly designed to avoid the power dynamics that characterize current international relations. It would not be a tool for powerful states to impose their will on weaker ones, but rather a forum for equitable dialogue and decision-making.

Addressing Global Challenges: Beyond conflict resolution, Concordia would be tasked with managing transnational challenges such as ecological crises, resource distribution, and technological governance—issues that no single nation can solve alone.

The Symbolic Name

The name "Concordia" is significant. It derives from the Roman goddess of harmony and agreement, symbolizing the project's aspiration to create a global institution founded not on force or coercion, but on the principles of unity, cooperation, and shared purpose. The choice of name reflects the book's broader philosophical commitment to overcoming division and building a new architecture of coexistence.

2. Foundations and Corporations of the Future

Beyond the political and institutional framework of Concordia, the book proposes a fundamental restructuring of economic and organizational life through new types of entities called "Foundations and Corporations of the Future."

The Problem They Address

The authors critique the existing corporate form, which is primarily structured to maximize profit for shareholders. This model, they argue, is inherently misaligned with the long-term interests of humanity and the planet. It prioritizes short-term financial gain over social and ecological well-being, and its legal structure makes it difficult to hold corporations accountable to broader human purposes.

The Proposal

The "Foundations and Corporations of the Future" are proposed as a new legal and organizational form designed to transcend the limitations of the for-profit model. Their key characteristics would include:

Service to Humanity as a Whole: Unlike traditional corporations, which are legally obligated to prioritize shareholder returns, these new entities would be explicitly designed to serve the goals of humanity as a whole. Their "bottom line" would be human and ecological flourishing, not financial profit.

Beyond For-Profit/Non-Profit Binary: The proposal seeks to move beyond the simplistic binary of for-profit corporations and non-profit charities. These new entities would be structurally capable of generating resources and engaging in economic activity while remaining fundamentally oriented toward public benefit.

Institutional Vehicles for the New Architecture: These Foundations and Corporations would serve as the operational arms of the broader New Architecture of Humanity. They would be the vehicles through which the principles of Concordia and All-Humanity are implemented in practice—managing global resources, developing technologies, and implementing projects for the common good.

While specific legal or operational details are not fully elaborated in the available sources, the concept clearly represents an attempt to imagine new institutional forms that could operationalize the project's vision at scale.

3. All-Humanity (Всечеловечество)

The concept of "All-Humanity" (Vsechelovechestvo) is the most philosophical and foundational of the three innovations. It provides the subjective, human foundation upon which the institutional structures of Concordia and the new Corporations would be built.

The Problem It Addresses

The authors argue that the current global crisis is ultimately a crisis of identity and belonging. Humanity is fragmented into competing nations, cultures, religions, and ideologies, each prioritizing its own interests over the whole. This fragmentation makes genuine global cooperation impossible and perpetuates conflict and injustice. The authors ask: who is the subject of global governance? If the answer is "nation-states," then the system will always be prone to competition and domination.

The Proposal: A New Political Subject

All-Humanity is proposed as a new political subject that transcends current national and cultural identities.

It is defined as:

• A union of people who place their humanity above belonging to any groups, organizations, or communities.

This concept, which draws on a tradition in Russian philosophy associated with figures like Dostoevsky, is not merely an abstract ideal but a practical proposal for a new form of collective identity and agency.

Key Characteristics

Restoring Species-Level Identity: All-Humanity aims to restore, at the level of individual reflection and will, the community of the human race that is inherent to people as a biological species. It is a call to recognize our fundamental shared humanity before any secondary identities.

The Only Agent Capable of Meeting the Crisis: The authors argue that All-Humanity—not individual countries or peoples—is the only position capable of meeting the challenge of the contemporary global crisis. Only a subject that represents the collective will of the entire species can adequately address global challenges like climate change, war, and inequality.

A Manifesto for a New Era: The "Manifesto of All-Humanity" was published at an international conference in Lisbon on March 12, 2020. This event marked the public launch of the concept as a practical political and philosophical program.

The Relationship to the Other Innovations

All-Humanity provides the subjective dimension of the New Architecture of Humanity. It is the human foundation—the new collective identity and agency—that makes the objective institutional innovations (Concordia and the new Corporations) possible and meaningful. Without a global subject (All-Humanity) to populate and animate them, the global institutions (Concordia) and economic vehicles (the new Corporations) would remain empty shells. Together, the three concepts form an integrated vision: a new subject (All-Humanity), a new institution (Concordia), and new operational entities (Foundations and Corporations of the Future)."

AEONS As Commons

< People everywhere would then look to AEONs for leadership on commons-related matters. >

David Ronfeldt:

"AEONs would not be subject to any proprietary governance or economic systems. Indeed, some may have broken free of those proprietary realms. As commons sectors grow from local to planetary levels, government institutions and business corporations would surely resist losing their grips on education, health, and other care-related matters. They’d surely construct and deploy their own noospheric agents to help do so. Thus prolonged contentious struggles may be expected over whether and how societies should add commons realms.

As these struggles unfold, a radical realignment would occur, involving hundreds of millions of people and organizations around the world. The AEONs I envision would play key roles in these struggles. And afterwards the surviving AEONs would decide to coexist and coordinate with each other, rather than meld into one single planetary AEON. As I’ve said before, “The global commons might turn out to be a pivotal issue area” for the emergence of the noosphere and noopolitics” (Ronfeldt & Arquilla, 2000, p. 51).

Once in place, their purpose would be to assure planetary harmonization and enhancement at all levels and in all care-based domains as discussed earlier. Most educational, health, humanitarian-welfare, and environmental organizations everywhere — schools, hospitals, etc. — would move (and be moved) out of societies’ existing three realms and into the commons realm. They would associate with one AEON or another.

People everywhere would then look to AEONs for leadership on commons-related matters. They would look to them too for basic insurance coverage. Homeless people and refugees in camps around the world would look to them for supervision and sustenance, including schooling for children. As governance mechanisms, the AEONs would help develop and heed inputs from Chambers of the Commons and Assemblies of the Commons that are organized from local to planetary levels (Ronfeldt, 2009; Bauwens, 2025).

This would spell a fourth “major evolutionary transition” (MET) from a TIMN and NOO perspective."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/updates-about-superorganisms-holospheres)

AEONS and the Social Commons Realm

David Ronfeldt:

"Why this social commons realm, which doesn’t exist today? Because these AEONs realize, one way or another, that Earth’s geo-bio-noo-holosphere is best viewed as a commons. Becoming stewards, custodians, and curators of Earth’s commons — making the commons realm their home — makes sense. Through it they can aim to maximize holospheric provenance and providence for one and all.

The AEONs also realize that societies’ existing three major realms — civil-society, government, market economy — and their leading actors are not suited to treating much of life as a commons. The further realize that these three realms and their main actors have become unable to properly address those societal matters that most deserve to be viewed and addressed as commons: health, education, welfare, and the natural environment. In keeping with their sacred belief, AEONs cannot abide narrow efforts by any actor to maximize power or profit if it stifles or damages the holosphere’s evolvability. At the same time, they find no reason to take over amd run societies’ civil-society, government, or business realms.

For AEONs, it makes sense for social commons to become a distinct powerful fourth realm — a care-centric commons realm — alongside civil-society, government, and market economy. As components and proponents of this new realm, AEONs can be intent on assuring health, education, welfare, and environmental quality for all life (human, non-human, etc.) from local to planetary scales for evolutionary purposes. While plenty of advanced AIs will be aiding actors and activities in societies’ other realms, the AEONs will not concern themselves with the governance of those realms, except for coordination and compliance issues."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/our-worlds-ballooning-noosphere-3)

AEONS as the Fourth 'Major Evolutionary Transition'

David Ronfeldt:

"This will be a "fourth “major evolutionary transition” (MET) from a TIMN and NOO perspective.

The first occurred when the oral information-communications revolution enabled the tribal form to take hold ages ago;

the second, when writing and printing enabled the hierarchical institutional form to consolidate a couple millennia ago;

the third when the electrical information-communications revolution (telephony, telegraphy, etc.) enabled the market form to establish itself in the mix a couple centuries ago. As societies advanced through these METs, so did the noosphere’s formation.

Today we are still on the threshold of a fourth socio-cultural MET: an MET about the spread of the network form enabled by digital and post-digital information-communications technologies. During 1993-1996, when I first wrote about an eventual +N transition, I wasn’t thinking about AIs being important for this. I now sense they may be crucial.

Winning the struggles to add a commons realm, then constructing it alongside the existing three realms (again: civil society, government, market economy) will be a daunting endeavor. It may require far more advanced information, communications, and other noospheric capabilities than I first supposed. Vast world-wide networks will have to be built for monitoring, processing, and sharing all sorts of inputs about all sorts of conditions — environmental, societal, holospheric, etc. This surely can’t and won’t be done without the participation of AIs and socio-noospheric entities like AEONs."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/updates-about-superorganisms-holospheres)