Stigmergy

Stigmergy defined

"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)

Sitgmergy and the Web

"The World-Wide Web is the first stimeric communication medium for humans.

The telephone and email don't count as stigmeric communication since they are only readable by the people on either end of the phone call, or the e-mail. In order for an environment to support stigmeric communciation the messages must be readable by everyone. Radio and TV don't count since they are a read-only medium as far as most people are concerned. In order for an environment to support sitgmery everyone has to be able to not only read it but to be able to write into it also.

Oh sure, we have had books and newspapers, but for the vast majority of people the only avenue they have to 'write-back' into that environment is in the 'letter-to-the-editors' department. Now we have groups.yahoo.com, K5, Slashdot, and weblogs. All avenues for anyone to enter into the conversation. Avenues for anyone to place a mub ball here or an ant corpse there. Yes, I know, not everyone has access to the internet, and it certainly isn't free for most folks, but the point is that it is the most accessible system yet and prices are falling and more people are getting on everyday.

Note that some other internet based communciation forms have moved onto the internet. Many mailing lists now have web accessible archives. Groups.yahoo.com takes it even further and allows posting from the web to the list as well. Another notable migration has been of usenet newsgroups onto the web via the much lauded groups.google.com. In both of these cases the mailing list and newsgroups were enhanced from being able to be searched and linked to from the web.

Now that we know web is a stigmeric communciation medium and that we've seen some of the power that nature has gotten out of stigmergy the answers to our earlier questions become rather easy.

Weblogs: Why does communicating through a weblog work? Stigmergy. Using a weblog is communcicating through stigmergy. Just like an ant, as I blog I leave a trail of information and links to other information I find interesting.

Google: Why is Google's PageRank algorithm so good? It is just following the Ant Trails. If links represent a dropping of pheremone then Google is just following the trails laid down to the tastiest morsels." (http://bitworking.org/news/Stigmergy)