Edge 240 - Iain Couzin: "Ants Have Algorithms"

Edge 240 - March 13, 2008

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(6,070 words)

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THE THIRD CULTURE
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Another example that we've been investigating are huge swarms of Mormon crickets. If you look at these swarms, all of the individuals are marching in the same direction, and it looks like cooperative behavior. Perhaps they have come to a collective decision to move from one place to another. We investigated this collective decision, and what really makes this system work in the case of the Mormon cricket is cannibalism.

ANTS HAVE ALGORITHMS
A Talk with Iain Couzin
EDGE Video

IAIN COUZIN is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. His research focuses on understanding collective behavior; how large-scale biological patterns result from the actions and interactions of the individual components of a system. He studies self-organized pattern formation in a wide range of biological systems, including ants, fish schools, bird flocks, locust/cricket swarms and human crowds.

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IN THE NEWS
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BOSTON GLOBE - IDEAS
October 30, 2007

BRAINIAC - What's Happening in the World of Ideas

RUSHKOFF'S ALGORITHM
Posted by Joshua Glenn

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BOING BOING
March 4, 2008

EDGE: Nicholas Christakis, Douglas Rushkoff, Alan Alda, and the EDGE Dinner

POSTED BY DAVID PESCOVITZ, MARCH 4, 2008 2:31 PM

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This online EDGE edition with links and graphics is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge240.html

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Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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EDGE

John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant

Copyright (c) 2008 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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Edge 239:The Edge Dinner - 2008:Photo Album & Slide Show

Edge 239 - March 4, 2008

http://www.edge.org

(1,990 words)

This online EDGE edition with links and graphics is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge239.html

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THE THIRD CULTURE
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THE EDGE DINNER - 2008
Monterey, California - February 27, 2008
Indian Summer Restaurant

PHOTO ALBUM & SLIDE SHOW

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THE REALITY CLUB
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Douglas Rushkoff, Alan Alda on Nicholas Christakis's "Social Networks Are Like the Eye". Christakis Replies.
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DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: I'm delighted to see Christakis working to codify the process through which ideas and behaviors spread through social networks. Finally, a scientist - not a marketer - is interested in mediated social contagion.
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ALAN ALDA: About thirty years ago I started wondering how fads and fashions in ideas, behaviors, foods, clothes, medicine, politics, and pretty much every other human activity could seem to spread through a culture like a contagion. So I began collecting hundreds of papers and books from different fields in the hope of finding someone who was examining this deep and mysterious question in a way that was quantifiable. It's exciting to see Nicholas Christakis attacking this notion scientifically because we're at a point now generally where it's fashionable to talk about fashion but not necessarily to study it with rigor.
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NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS: In his comments regarding "Social Networks Are Like the Eye," Alan Alda highlights three distinct, albeit inter-related issues, two of which are also touched on by Douglas Rushkoff: the role of mechanisms of spread in social networks; the problem of determining the mechanisms of spread; and the analogy of a swarm that is sometimes used to understand certain social network processes.
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This online EDGE edition with links and graphics is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge239.html
----------------------------------------------------
Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation
under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
----------------------------------------------------
EDGE

John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant

Copyright (c) 2008 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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