stigmergy – manwithoutqualities

In its most generic formulation, stigmergy (an optimization technique) is the phenomenon of indirect communication mediated by modifications of the environment.

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November 27, 2021stigmergy

Ted Lewis: Engineering Hall of Fame

I’m chuffed to learn of my collaborator Ted Lewis’ recognition — see here. Very much taken by his superb Network Science: Theory and Applications I made contact. Our shared interest in stigmergy found voice in a couple of joint projects: Human-Human Stigmergy and Stigmergy in the Human Domain. I was privileged to read a draft…

June 25, 2021stigmergy

What termites and cells have in common

Here’s a press release for an open access technical paper. This shows that morphing of cells is not solely guided by an unidirectional information flow from extracellular cues, but is also determined by the morphology of the cell itself as shaped by prior events. Pierre-Paul GrasséSelf-organizationStigmergy

March 16, 2021stigmergy

Stigmergy meets Jane Jacobs

The bringing of these two literatures together is long overdue. The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 61, Issue 2, March 2021, Pages 414–433: “Bringing the ‘many eyes’ theory of swarm intelligence into conversation with Jacobs’ (1961) notion of ‘eyes on the street’, we examine the impact social and mobile media may have on community crime…

January 31, 2021stigmergy

Sleep behavior assessment via smartwatch and stigmergic receptive fields

I mentioned this paper when it first came out a few years back. As we’ve put it before, stigmergic behaviour can be found from ants to economies. As someone with an overlapping interest in both stigmergy and sleep disorder, this technology seems very promising since it’s infinitely less intrusive than the clumsy and high-priced devices…

April 28, 2020stigmergy

Collective intelligence and social ontology: Bridging the divide between human and animal collective cognition through stigmergy and Peircean semiotics

Wow! Quite a mouthful for a title. This paper covers a lot of ground that is of interest to me and cites several people with whom I’ve worked. Instead, what I am going to suggest in the next pages is that collective intelligence phenomena can be explained, in many cases, by means of structures of emergent…

September 11, 2019stigmergy

Cognitive stigmergy: A study of emergence in small-group social networks

Given the significance of today’s date, I thought I’d repost details of a collaborator of mine’s paper in Cognitive Systems Research. 9/11Emergencehuman-human stigmergyNetwork topologySelf-organizationSimulationsituated cognitionSmall worldSocial networkSpontaneous orderstigmergicStigmergyTed Lewis

July 13, 2019stigmergy

Stigmergic behaviour and nodal places in residential areas: Case of post-socialist city Kharkiv in Ukraine

Here’s a recent paper citing Francis Heylighen who featured heavily in Ted and my Special Issue of Cognitive Systems Research – Human-Human Stigmergy. Chris and I, though, did mention in passing urban sprawl as a prominent instance of stigmergy twelve years ago. stigmergy opens broader possibilities for analysis of the development of the city, its networks and…

March 30, 2019stigmergy

The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same

In our paper Stigmergic Epistemology, Stigmergic Cognition we noted the phenomenon whereby swarm behavior runs the risk of a dysfunctional communal narrowing of attention that can be self-fulfilling. This phenomenon is validated by Jonathan Touboul in his revised paper freely available here. As Touboul rightly says, this phenomenon is found across all domains of collective intentionality…

March 9, 2019stigmergy

The ant colony as a test for scientific theories of consciousness

This in Synthese freely available here. We introduce the Ant Colony Test (ACT) as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. However only a small fraction of neurons in the brain might be…

March 3, 2019stigmergy

Using Stigmergy to Distinguish Event-Specific Topics in Social Discussions

Open access article. complexitycomputational intelligencedistributed knowledgeSelf-organizationsocial epistemologyspontaneous ordersStigmergy