StigmergicWeb

What is stigmergy, and how can a web be stigmergic?

Stigmergy is a term introduced to describe the coordination of activity that occurs in the activity of social insects, such as nest-building behaviour of termites. The coordination is not imposed by any central authority; there is a queen termite but her role is reproductive, not coordinating. Each agent in the group is autonomous, and the control does not reside with a central authority, but with the interactions between all members of the community. Termites, ants and other social animals create complex structures through the net effect of a very large number of interactions. The action of an individual agent in the system causes a change in the environment — perhaps a pheromone is laid down in response to finding a food source or being attacked — and the other agents respond not to the individual, but to the changes produced in the environment.

So how is the World-Wide Web stigmergic? In his essay Stigmergy and the World-Wide Web, Joe Gregorio says that we are all ants building a nest we cannot see.

The World-Wide Web is human stigmergy. The web and it’s ability to let anyone read anything and also to write back to that environment allows stigmeric communication between humans. Some of the most powerful forces on the web today, Google and weblogs are fundamentally driven by stigmeric communication and their behaviour follows similar natural systems like Ant Trails and Nest Building that are accomplished using stigmergy. The web is new. In the context of written human history is barely a blink of an eye. Yet as new as the web is, it is already showing it’s ability to support complex human interactions that mimic natural systems use of stigmergy. And we’re just getting started…

Clearly, the web has moved beyond a collection of individual pages, even pages that are joined together. Weblogs and wikis open the web up to a larger pool of authors than ever before. Discussion boards and chat rooms transcend geographic boundaries of discourse. Isn’t it time you joined in the conversation?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 at 15:19 and is filed under stigmergy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.