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 you place a number of boids on a screen with three or four simple rules telling each to match the velocity of the others, move randomly, and avoid collisions, after a while they will begin to move together as a group in complex patterns resembling the flocking of birds.
• self-organization into patterns, as occurs with flocks of birds or schools of fish
It is in the interactions between the parts that something new is created. This process is, in a word, emergence. Emergence is the magical quality that gives networks their exponential potential for impact. To tap into the boundless creativity that emerges when people from different parts of a system interact with one another, network leaders avoid
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