The term 'blue church', as defined by Jordan Hall, refers to the centralized, top-down, hierarchical social structures and institutions that dominated the 20th-century cultural and informational landscape. This construct is characterized by its reliance on broadcast media, expert-driven authority, and a one-way flow of information from the few to the many, creating a monolithic narrative that guided societal norms and policies. The 'blue church' is emblematic of a legacy system that struggles to adapt to the decentralized, networked information environment of the 21st century, leading to increasing systemic brittleness and socio-political fragmentation as it faces disruption from emergent, decentralized network structures often referred to as the 'red religion'. This clash represents a key battleground in the ongoing transition towards new modes of collective intelligence and social organization.

See also: complex system, collective intelligence, distributed cognition, feedback loop, game theory