The systems engineering community is often faced with complexity barriers that develop because modern systems must be agile and resilient. This flexibility requires dynamic changes to the system so it can adapt to changing missions and changes in the internal and external environments. We are particularly concerned with architectural solutions applicable for creating a system of systems, such as a community of (human, machine or hybrid) agents, which cooperates and collaborates, sharing situation awareness and assessment and creating an emergent virtual agent that acts as one aware individual. We present a concept related to the long-standing evolution of cognitive architectures. The novelty is the demonstration of how Pask’s “conversation theory” can be used to achieve two important traits of emergent general intelligence: communication and learning. The relevance is in the intent to support the thinking swarm initiative, in which the swarm is considered a virtual organisation tasked to perform a mission.