saw them hurrying from either side
and each shade kissed another, without pausing,
Each by the briefest society satisfied.
(Ants, in their dark ranks, meet exactly so,
rubbing each other’s noses, to ask perhaps
What luck they’ve had, or which way they should go.)
— Dante, Purgatorio, Canto XXVI
Before I went back to grad school, I had been studying self organization [...]
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 [...]
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. [...]
(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 [...]
(This article is an entry on my continuing series on Self Organization. The first article was Emergence, and the article that preceeded this one was based on stigmergy. )
What is it that governs here? What is it that issues orders, forsees the future, elaborates plans, and preserves equilibrium?
- Maeterlinck [1]
Social Insects are an incredible biological [...]
(This article is part of an ongoing series “The Principles of Self Organization“, preceeded by the article “Negative Feedback“.)
Stigmergy is a method of communication, albeit in an indirect fashion, between two units or agents. Stigmergy is defined as information gathered from work in progress [ 2 ]. It is discussed with respect to self organization, [...]
(Part of a continuing series, “The Principles of Self Organization”; Emergence was the first article and the article on Positive Feedback precedes this article.)
Feedback is a mechanism in any system to describe how well something performs, from report cards, to profit and loss statements — feedback lets us know where we stand in relation to [...]
(This is part 2 of a continuing series entitled “The Principles of Self Organization”; The first article was entitled “Emergence“)
Feedback is a driving mechanic in the process of self organization. There are two types of feedback, positive and negative; positive feedback generally promotes change in a system, where negative feedback controls change in a system. [...]
(This post is an introduction to the basis ideas of self organization. Over the coming weeks I’m going to take a look at the various aspects of self organization in living and non living systems, and how that is being applied to the computational and linked data worlds.)
Technological sytems become organized by commands from outside, [...]