It can keep going!

Intelligence -> societies -> technology -> ?

One has to wonder how far can emergence stretch given enough time, some kind of entropic limit probably exists but I'm just a layman, hopefully someone more knowledgeable can share if we already know a physical hard limit for emergence.

I like your progression. It makes me wonder if intelligence could lead to technology absent societies.

If we take a simple definition of technology - such as “tool” or some external inanimate thing we use as an extension of ourselves - then I think all animals on Earth that we have deemed intelligent to some degree use “technology”. Crows using sticks to pick things out holes, chimps crafting spears for hunting, dolphins wearing “hats”, octopuses building stone fortresses, etc. So I guess it’s important to define the limit of the definition of technology.

After a brilliant start (atoms etc.,) it starts to be problematic once one hits societies. After all, the earlier progressions are undeniably astounding stable successes in their various incarnations. A pessimist might say 'Stable' societies so far have tended eventually towards being self-destructive tyrannies.

They are increasingly unstable, hence why I pondered about some enthropic limit the higher up it goes in the enthropy ladder.

Atoms are quite stable, even though they also suffer from quantum decay; then molecules can be stable but are less stable than atoms; up the ladder to biochemistry it starts to become more unstable the more complex it gets; so on and so forth.

Stable societies might be something that humans haven't achieved yet but somewhere in the Universe some other lifeform might, each rung of the ladder will filter out the most unstable versions of it, coalescing into the emergence of the more stable versions of it. Advanced technology is very unstable for us, requiring constant maintenance by intelligent humans.

Of course, it's just food for thought :)