How consciousness works and peer to peer

Continuing this post, Chapter 5 highlights how consciousness works in the brain, highly reminiscent of how peer to peer (P2P) works. The global neuronal workspace is what organizes brain areas and creates consciousness:

"The workspace thus rests on a dense network of interconnected brain regions—a decentralized organization without a single physical meeting site. At the top of the cortical hierarchy, an elitist board of executives, distributed in distant territories, stays in sync by exchanging a plethora of messages."

The metaphor of elite executives on top of the hierarchy however does not lend itself to the P2P metaphor of equipotential exchange. The latter metaphor though does recognize hierarchy for specialized people performing particular functions at specific times depending on the project, so in that sense it does cohere with the brain metaphor, especially in that there is no single, overarching person or central executive in control of everything but rather this decentralized neural (or social) net.