The idea that ants, honeybees, or other social animals might do a thing or two better than we do is ancient.
Democracy in honeybees and other animals: What humans can learn from social species. - ... - 0 views
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Tom Seeley has written a lovely and compelling book titled Honeybee Democracy which suggests we turn to the bees to see how they make decisions. Thanks to the work of Seeley and his collaborators, it is now clear that honeybee hives really are democratic.
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When it’s time to look for a new nest, options are weighted by the evaluations of many different bees about a site’s qualities—its size, its humidity, the density of surrounding flowers. Individual bees vote with dances, and when the number of dances in favor of some particular site is high enough, the masses are swayed. Together, citizen bees choose, if not perfection, the best possible option.
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Stigmergy - P2P Foundation - 0 views
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That collaboration is inherently composed of two primary components—social negotiation and creative output
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By simply being in the presence of other humans one can collaborate without having any regard for or knowledge of the process’s existence. However, even if it is unconscious, social negotiation (the delineation and identification of personal boundaries, interests, stakes, objectives, etc.) must take place as the result of the communication required by collaboration.
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Another caveat to the second primary component, creative output, is that the output may take the form of an ongoing process instead of a final conclusion.
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"Stigmergy is a term used in biology (from the work of french biologist Pierre-Paul Grasse) to describe environmental mechanisms for coordinating the work of independent actors (for example, ants use pheromones to create trails and people use weblog links to establish information paths, for others to follow). The term is derived from the greek words stigma ("sign") and ergon ("to act"). Stigmergy can be used as a mechanism to understand underlying patterns in swarming activity." (Global Guerilla weblog)
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