Just to reiterate, the study we are discussing and my original post are about inefficiencies in the design of human social hierarchies and not inneficiencies in data structures.<p>&gt;Hierarchies are efficient, that is why they exist.<p>They exist because they are legacy systems that were once efficient or at least practical.<p>&gt;If we want to know who is responsible for some aspect of an organization we ask the boss after gathering some basic info on how that organization is structured and work our way down.<p>This is exactly what is now inneficient. When information was centralized due to the constraints of paper and print media this may have been efficient. But now that information is decentralized and distributed it becomes much quicker to simply query the information instantaneously yourself rather than having to go through a third party.<p>Centralized information leads to pyramid shaped social hierarchies.<p>Distributed information leads to flat or spherical internetworked social organization.