The queen does not rule

Source: https://aeon.co/essays/how-ant-societies-point-to-radical-possibilities-for-humans

Another great piece that has me thinking about ants and social networks

 

Primarily, in a distributed process, there is never central control, while in division of labour there might be. A leader can tell one citizen to make candles and another to make shoes. In a distributed process this would happen through local interactions, for example with people who want to buy candles or shoes – creating demand that is filled by an entrepreneur who then meets the demand.

By contrast, in a distributed process, the fact that individuals are interchangeable makes the whole system more robust and more resilient

The term ‘distributed process’ originated in computer science. There, it means that no single unit, such as a router in a data network, knows what all the others are doing and tells them what to do. Instead, interactions between each unit and its local connections add up to the desired outcome.

Ants can show how distributed processes might allow us to adjust to a changing environment; to build nests, decide when to move, or change from working inside the nest to foraging outside.

Ant societies, organised by distributed algorithms rather than division of labour, have thrived for more than 130 million years.