Here’s an extract from the fifth article by Tarja Susi from this special Human-Human Stigmergy issue Some years ago Susi and Ziemke (2001) made a comparative analysis of social/situated theories of cognition (activity theory, situated action, and distributed cognition) and stigmergy, discussing the coordination paradox, visible in both social insects and human activities. The key elements compared were agents,…
Here’s an extract from the fourth article by Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez from this special Human-Human Stigmergy issue. Pierre-Paul Grassé identified for the first time the importance of indirect (environmental) stimulus-response patterns while studying how termites were capable of creating complex habitats through coordination without central command. The most singular characteristic of this stigmergy, as Grassé called the phenomenon, is that…
Here’s an extract from the third article by Ted Lewis and Richard Bergin from this special Human-Human Stigmergy issue. A human stigmergy framework for product development Many investigators over the past century have attempted to quantify human innovation as a property of social organizations such as corporations as well as individual entrepreneurs. Andergassen et al. argue that innovation appears…
This special issue of Cognitive Systems Research is intended as a follow-up and a companion to an earlier issue devoted to the theme of stigmergy, what we termed stigmergy 3.0 ( Doyle & Marsh, 2013). It reinforces the idea that the observation and the theorizing of the mechanism of stigmergy is no longer the sole…
Stigmergy gets a bit of a mention in Newsweek. Swarms often work by “stigmergy,” a term coined by French biologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959 to describe termite behavior. He defined it as “the stimulation of workers by the performance they have achieved.” It has come to mean a mark left in the environment. Think of…
Here’s is a series of excellent stigmergic renderings. distributed cognitiondistributed knowledgeemergent orderstigmergicstigmergic cognitionstigmergic epistemologyStigmergy
New “review” paper in CSR. Artificial intelligenceComplex adaptive systemcomplexitycomputational intelligencedistributed cognitiondistributed knowledgeEmbodied cognitionEmergenceExtended MindExternalismmulti-agent modelingrationalismSelf-organizationsituated cognitionsocial epistemologySpontaneous orderstigmergic epistemologyStigmergySwarm behaviorSwarm intelligence
Podcast with Justin Werfel talking about building termite-inspired robots. Artificial intelligencecomplexitydistributed cognitiondistributed knowledgeroboticsrobotssituated cognitionSpontaneous orderstigmergicstigmergic cognitionStigmergy
Here is a recent open access article I came across entitled Co-Adaptation and the Emergence of Structure. Check out their “Stigmergy Game” model. Cognitive sciencecomplexitydistributed knowledgesituated cognitionsocial epistemologySocially distributed cognitionstigmergic epistemologyStigmergy
A new paper by Giuggioli et al. in PNAS September 30, 2013 Abstract: Collective animal behavior studies have led the way in developing models that account for a large number of individuals, but mostly have considered situations in which alignment and attraction play a key role, such as in schooling and flocking. By quantifying how animals react…
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