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Co Collaboration What we can learn from insect coordination Co Collaboration by Kathi Vian Complexity Made Simple How is it that termites are able to build towering by leaving a dollop of mud on the ground. Another cathedrals out of mud without referring to a set termite passes by and responds by adding its own of blueprints? How do ants, without a leader tell- dollop. The more the mound of mud grows, the ing them what to do, know how to assemble them- more termites deposit mud on it, eventually con- selves by the thousands into living rafts to move structing elaborate structures without anything across a fast-flowing stream? After all, the brains more than a simple biological imperative—a kind of ants are smaller than the “quarter of a small of biological programming—to add to an existing pin’s head,” as Charles Darwin put it, so they are bit of mud. This kind of indirect information-based incapable of planning and organizing like we are. coordination is called “stigmergy”. Social insects accomplish their complex feats We might think of stigmergy as a close cousin of unsupervised coordination by sensing and re- of free market economies, where individuals act- sponding to traces left on surfaces in their envi- ing independently to satisfy their personal needs ronment. These traces act as signals to those who have an unplanned mass effect of promoting the come afterward, cueing them to build on the first welfare of the group. But there’s an important dif- signal. The more traces left behind, the stronger ference: stigmergy doesn’t assume rational actors the signal becomes. For example, an individual who weigh the costs and benefits of taking a cer- termite might inadvertently start a new cathedral tain course of action. Instead it assumes millions 46 05_FEATURE_Collab_Stigmergic_rw_100316.indd 46 10/6/16 1:03 PM Surfaces and Signals: The Building Blocks of Stigmergic Economies Termite cathedrals start with a single surface. Stig- mergic economies start with massively many surfaces for leaving signals. Beyond mud droppings that add up to termite cathedrals or pheromones that create the instruction set for armies of ants, today’s digital world has thousands of new surfaces for individual actors—humans or machines—to leave their daily marks. Other actors read those marks as signals and build on them, often creating new value. For instance, they remix media and fork code. They set the value of a song by downloading it. They build communities and global movements with simple memes that get replicated, reinter- preted, and rehashed to build group identities that people may be willing to die for. In the coming years, these surfaces for signaling will dramatically proliferate as the digital world is embedded ubiquitously in the physical world. The IoT will turn billions of physical objects into new surfaces for signaling—from mi- croscopic plaque-clearing circuits inserted into human arteries to sensors on self-driving trucks. Imagine a stigmergic ecosystem within the riv- ers that flow through the world’s famous cities. A of biologically programmed agents who instinc- duck sheltering in the underbrush at the edge of tively respond to simple cues in their environment. the Hudson might leave a dropping that a genet- Stigmergy is one of nature’s great tricks. Can ic sequencing sensor the size of a thumb drive human beings adopt stigmergy and put it to work (like Oxford Nanopore’s tiny DNA sequencer, the for them? We’ll find out over the next few decades, MinION) would automatically detect and ana- as the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality, lyze, transmitting the result on an internet of living and machine intelligence create new and rich- things (like Oxford Nanopore’s Metrichor cloud ly provocative ambient experiences of the world service for real-time molecular analyses), where around us, laying the foundation for surprising artificially intelligent algorithms have learned to stigmergic economies. These economies will take recognize early permutations of the H1N1 virus. us well beyond the dynamics of free markets to a These algorithms, in turn, alert not only scientists world where humans and machines collaborate at and the Centers for Disease Control, but anyone every scale to solve complex problems in simple who is fishing with an Internet-connected fish- ways. They will introduce us to self-defining prod- ing reel or incubating chicken eggs with an Inter- ucts and services, self-assembling supply chains, net-controlled sensor—all without a director of and self-organizing social structures. They will public health or CNN to get the message out. emerge from a complex ecosystem of physical, dig- As matter of all kinds, from barrels of olive oil ital, and mental “surfaces” to support new forms to piping hot pizzas, is routed efficiently to its des- of signaling. They will use blockchains and smart tination with autonomous vehicles, both the ship- contracts to translate signals into incentives for ments and vehicles become smart surfaces where trade. Stigmergic economies may well turn today’s ratings, monetary value, health value, bacterial ge- institutional forms into emergent games and col- netic data, traffic density reports, and other crowd- laborative art forms that put entertainment front sourced markers can be recorded, amplified, and and center as both humans and smart machines incorporated into other information flows. And adapt to the rapidly changing ecosystems of the the crowd in this case is not necessarily the human 21st century. crowd at all. It’s a lot of smart, connected devices Here’s how it could unfold. getting socialized through stigmergy—each using 47 05_FEATURE_Collab_Stigmergic_rw_100316.indd 47 10/6/16 1:03 PM Co Collaboration where people and things can collaborate via trac- Stigmergic es, markers, and signals that add up to much more than any individual programmer, product design- economies may er, or marketing director could imagine. Eventually these ad hoc collaborations of sig- well turn today’s nals will cross the boundaries of individual virtual realities, creating what science fiction authors institutional forms have perhaps imagined as inter-dimensional net- working: communication across parallel realities. into emergent They may even cross the boundaries of the mental realities as neuroscience turns the human brain games and into a read-write surface. collaborative art Bitcoins and Blockchains: The Incentives of Stigmergic Economies forms that put Of course, signals alone do not guarantee eco- nomic coordination or cooperation. In the world entertainment front of massively many new signaling surfaces, the re- sulting flood of signals could just as easily breed and center. chaos as it could self-organize supply chains. Ev- ery stigmergic system depends on attention to the digital traces to activate its next move. marks or traces that stimulate successive actions. The results are likely to span the spectrum from Often this attention is hardwired into the individ- triumph to catastrophe. Smart algorithms might ual actors: termites are biologically wired to look respond to millions of bio-signals to anticipate for piles of mud where they can deposit their own the need for precision drugs and protocols in a contribution. But in most human systems, extrin- Zika-infested region. But they might just as easi- sic incentives enter into the equation. And the ly conjure euthanasia “services” that fall prey to most pervasive incentive is money. the Tay-bot syndrome, learning the worst that the Cue the blockchain. The distributed computing crowd, both human and non-human, has to offer. model of the blockchain has already given rise to Still, an instrumented IoT is just the tip of the Bitcoin as a fungible and scalable digital curren- iceberg for new signaling surfaces and the value cy. Crudely stated, Bitcoin miners take the place exchanges they can create. Even as the great on- of Wall Street speculators, making their money by boarding of connected devices unfolds, the coming paying attention to billions of individual transac- decade will usher in 3D immersive virtual realities tions—”signals”—and verifying their accuracy in leased P al r Neut ad M ied rr o W to incorporate these objects into their imaginative the Bitcoin ledger. The verification service they 8 7 6 5 worlds. They will turn sensor-laden mechanical provide through the distributed tracking of trans- pencils into scalpels in virtual operating rooms actions takes the place of centralized banks and or conductor’s batons in a global symphony of a their computers. It enables rapid trade between million instruments. Every virtual reality will be individuals and across organizations, and even a new surface—an ecosystem of surfaces, really— global borders. Meanwhile, dozens of organizations are exper- imenting with blockchain architectures as a way to create other kinds of incentives for participating in a stigmergic economy—that is, to share data via wallets, smart contracts, and so-called oracle services. These incentives encompass the traditional human incentives like learning, good health, en- Earlier this year, Microsoft released a chatbot named Tay on ted a r rust F y t iosi r u C ised r p r Su ed r o B tertainment, access to resources, and ultimately Twitter.4 Its AI learned3 to “talk like 2 a human” by mimicking1 all the personal reputation, all of which can be represent- Twitter users who interacted with her—including some who ed and traded on the blockchain. spewed hateful and violent rhetoric. As a result, Tay tweeted several offensive and inflammatory statements. And Microsoft The blockchain has the potential to make these pulled her of the platform less than 24 hours after her launch. kinds of values as tangible and perhaps as fungible 48 05_FEATURE_Collab_Stigmergic_rw_100316.indd 48 10/6/16 1:03 PM as money.

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