One cannot have a conversation with a single neuron, and yet in some sense neurons can communicate with one another, and as a result 100 billion of them enable each of us, as individuals, to have a conversation with one another. Neuron chatter emerges as intelligible speech.

By comparison, notwithstanding the BBC’s motto “Nation shall speak peace unto nation,”26 individual chatter somehow does not translate into intelligent crowd speak. What are the lessons of collective consciousness and computational efficiency exhibited by what Buchanan describes as “the thoughtful architecture,” that is, the brain, for us to learn in terms of nation-states and the ways in which they exchange ideas? Do Thomas Friedman’s ideas27 give us direction here?