The distributed sensory system is the systems-level reading of signal access: a civilization does not perceive itself from the top. Every participant occupies a different position in the field — a nurse, a teacher, a farmer, an engineer, a newcomer, a small business, a person at the margins — and therefore encounters signals invisible from anywhere else.
None possesses the whole map. But collectively they hand the field vastly more intelligence than any central authority could generate alone.
The perception a civilization needs to steer is thus distributed by construction; it cannot be centralized without loss. This is why the model’s other commitments turn out to have a sensory function: standing is what keeps the sensors connected (ignore a participant and the field goes blind where they stand), and positional signal is how the different readings are kept legible rather than flattened into one official view. The distributed sensory system is the perceiving half of the self-steering ecology; distributed steering intelligence is the acting half. See The Self-Steering Ecology.