F is for Flocking
A flock of birds, a school of fish, swarming ants and human crowds. The study of collective behavior, where there is no centralized control but rather where self-organizing pattern formation is the result of local interaction between neighbors and their environments, is now one of the leading computation models being applied to everything from gaming and social networks to military tactics, robotics, medicine and telecommunications. One programming example modeled after the synchronized movement of birds dancing in the sky is Boids, a simple algorithm that uses three basic rules: separation, alignment and cohesion. Instrumental in swarming architecture, the aim is to design on-demand “living diagrams” constructed by real-time information, where people and space “flock” together to create structures “on the edge of form.” Although the mechanisms underlying flocking have baffled scientists for years, with naturalists in the past even concluding that flocking was telepathy, today we find it’s suggested that birds use magnetoreception to sense Earth’s magnetic field, as well as the idea from biologist Rupert Sheldrake that quantum-field mechanisms may explain this phenomenon, with the suggestion that social groups are organized and directed by fields of energy and information. As to whether or not “the wisdom of the crowds” is greater than individual intelligence, or is stupid and boring, is currently up for debate. However, it is clear that chemical pheromone exchange between ants can be compared to social messaging in networks, and swarms, which have an amazing ability to act like a collective mind or “The Superorganism,” as suggested by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, is undoubtedly culturally relevant in today’s interconnected times. Flock on, flock off.