Where there is an ecosystem, there are local experts. An outsider can muddle through an unfamiliar wilderness at some level, but to thrive or to survive a crisis, he’ll require local expertise. Gardeners regularly surprise academic experts by growing things they aren’t supposed to be able to grow because, as local experts, they tune into [...]
Without its software, a computer is basically a useless lump of metal.
- first line of the book “Operating Systems: Design and Implementation”
So, in my last article, we took a look at the last 50 or so years of operating system evolution. In this article, I want to take a short look at the current state [...]
Once the young lava fields of Iceland cool down, life begins anew little by little. Ice, wind and water flatten and carve out shapes to begin with, then, during the summer, bacteria, lichen and fungi prepare the soil for plants, in particular mosses which adapt to an environment which remains difficult. These plants colonize the [...]
(This is a thread of an ongoing series on Self Organization; The first article was Emergence, and the preceding article was Self Organization and Social Insects.)
In this article I want to explore discovery in social insects as it is a critical mechanic given that individuals in a colony have little beyond local perception yet employ [...]