The General Board of a Culture Orbital is an elected body that represented the entire human and drone population on the Orbital to the Orbital's Hub at the very highest levels.[1]
The role of the General Board is almost entirely ceremonial as the operations of a Culture Orbital will be entirely run by its Hub. However, the General Board exists for at least two reasons.
The first is that when visitors from outside of the Culture visit, some hierarchical societies wish to have an official representative to which they can speak to. Indeed, when the Chelgrians Tibilo Quilan and Huyler visit Masaq' Orbital, they note that Estray Lassils, then a member of its General Board, was in some sense President of the entire Orbital of fifty billion people.[1]
The second reason for maintaining a General Board is that virtually all Culture citizens speak directly to Hub in one-on-one conversations. However, that leaves open the possibility that the Hub will play some prank or other mischief by playing citizens off against each other or telling different people different things. Thus, having some sort of hierarchy and official representation of the population is considered good practice and safeguard against such a theoretical event.[1]
List of members[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Look to Windward, Chapter 7