Posted by Kirsten Gibbs Last updated 29th January 2021 reading time
Swarms look like an attractive option for decentralisation. After all, "Social insects work without supervision. In fact, their teamwork is largely self-organized, and coordination arises from the different interactions among individuals in the colony. Although these interactions might be primitive (one ant merely following the trail left by another, for instance), taken together they result in efficient solutions to difficult problems (such as finding the shortest route to a food source among myriad possible paths). The collective behavior that emerges from a group of social insects has been dubbed 'swarm intelligence.'" (Corporate Rebels blog 'Reinventing work')
As you know, I'm all for self-organisation, but for me it has to emerge from autonomy and a shared purpose. Ant colonies work through programming. Individual ants don't get much say. I'd rather be a goose.
A different kind of swarming showed up this week around GameStop shares. Bottom-up collaboration between individuals.
