Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller in 1938, is the ability of technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing," that is, an accelerating increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output (products, services, information, etc.)
[1] The application of materials and technology in modern cell phones, compared to older computers and phones, exemplify the concepts of ephemeralization whereby technological advancement can drive efficiency in the form of fewer materials being used to provide greater utility (more functionality with less resource use).
Fuller's vision was that ephemeralization, through technological progress,[2] could result in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population.
This requires a distributed, self-organizing system, formed by all individuals, computers and the communication links that connect them.
According to Heylighen, the effect is to superpose the contributions of many different human and computer agents into a collective map that may link the cognitive and physical resources relatively efficiently.