The Smart Swarm: How to Work Efficiently, Communicate Effectively, and Make Better Decisions Using the Secrets of Flocks, Schools, and Colonies
Peter Miller
Language: English
Pages: 188
ISBN: 2:00356853
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
What ants, bees, fish, and smart swarms can teach us about communication, organization, and decision-making
The modern world may be obsessed with speed and productivity, but twenty-first-century humans actually have much to learn from the ancient instincts of swarms. A fascinating new take on the concept of collective intelligence and its colorful manifestations in some of our most complex problems, The Smart Swarm introduces a compelling new understanding of the real experts on solving our own complex problems relating to such topics as business, politics, and technology.
Based on extensive globe-trotting research, this lively tour from National Geographic reporter Peter Miller introduces thriving throngs of ant colonies, which have inspired computer programs for streamlining factory processes, telephone networks, and truck routes; termites, used in recent studies for climate-control solutions; schools of fish, on which the U.S. military modeled a team of robots; and many other examples of the wisdom to be gleaned about the behavior of crowds-among critters and corporations alike.
In the tradition of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds and the innovative works of Malcolm Gladwell, The Smart Swarm is an entertaining yet enlightening look at small-scale phenomena with big implications for us all.
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as it does for Deborah Gordon’s desert ants, but what enables them to act as one when making decisions? “It’s actually a brilliant approach,” says Kevin Passino, a professor of engineering at Ohio State who has collaborated with Tom Seeley and Kirk Visscher on their honeybee house-hunting experiments. Using data from Appledore Island, Passino has created computer simulations of swarms that show a striking resemblance between their collective decision-making system and the mental processes of a
spherical nest, which might measure three to four feet in diameter, is normally located just below ground level. That’s where the queen’s chamber can be found, surrounded by nurseries for the young and extensive galleries for growing fungus. Like leaf-cutter ants, these African termites cultivate a particular species of symbiotic fungus (Termitomyces) to help them break down raw wood and grass into something they can digest. The colony needs a great deal of this fungus to feed the two million or
our modern society. Within hours, a thousand cell phone towers were knocked out, countless telephone poles were toppled, land lines were submerged, and switchboards were flooded, leaving more than 3 million people without phones for checking up on family members, reporting problems, or calling for help. It was a terrible time to be disconnected. All across New Orleans, once the levees gave way and most of the city was under water, tens of thousands of people were trapped on their roofs, in their
Much depends on what we’re trying to accomplish and how we structure our groups. As biologists have shown us, flocks, schools, and colonies derive their resilience and flexibility primarily from the mechanisms they use to manage interactions among individuals—what Tom Seeley calls a colony’s bag of tricks. These mechanisms vary widely, depending on the particular problems swarms are dealing with, but they often include a reliance on local knowledge (which maintains a diversity of information);
Thought-Transference (or What?) in Birds (New York: Richard R. Smith, 1931). Page 161: For more on Selous and collective intelligence, see Iain Couzin’s essay “Collective Minds,” Nature, February 15, 2007. Page 164: Andrea Cavagna and his colleagues describe their research in Andrea Cavagna et al., “The STARFLAG Handbook on Collective Animal Behaviour: 1. Empirical Methods,” Animal Behaviour 76, no. 1 (2008), pp. 217-236. Cavagna and Irene Giardina discuss more details in “The Seventh