Welcome to the Swarm
The text explores online swarms as decentralized networks of individuals and algorithms acting collectively, highlighting their coordination, lifecycle, and contrasts with other online formations like communities and organizations.
summerofprotocols.comThere is an art to flocking: staying separate enough not to crowd each other, aligned enough to maintain a shared direction, and cohesive enough to always move towards each other
When participants and facilitators engage in a creative collaboration, they need to be able to pivot fluidly, not only individually but as a group, like starlings flying in murmurations.
The swarm presents as a mass rather than a unitary enemy and offers no obvious target; thinking as a single superorganism, the swarm is elusive, ephemeral, in flight. Like