The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done [Hardcover] chapter Summaries:
From Publishers Weekly
Insects are social creatures, perhaps even more social—in the strict scientific sense—than humans since they lack such socially obstructing attributes as ego, personality, and opinion. Miller, senior editor at National Geographic, examines hives, mounds, colonies, and swarms, whose complex systems of engagement and collective decision making have catalyzed innovations in engineering and can suggest solutions to such problems as climate change. The sophisticated system of decentralized interdependence exhibited by termites invites a lesson on how to respond to emergencies, while the chemical-based communications among African ants helped officials at Southwest Airlines define their seating policy. Insects, birds, and fish variously demonstrate the plausibility and success of disorganization leading to self-organization and leaderless processes. Adding understanding to the dark side of group dynamics and, inevitably, mob behavior is the study of locusts, innocuous until they become part of a crowd. Miller informs, engages, entertains, and even surprises in this thought-provoking study of problem making and problem solving, and through the comparison of human and insect scenarios, shows how social cues and signals can either bring about social cooperation or destruction. (Aug.)
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Review
“I loved The Smart Swarm. It’s been a while since I was this stimulated by a book, or saw so many practical applications. And what a great read.”
-Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics
“With an eye for detail and an easy style, Peter Miller explains why swarm intelligence has scientists buzzing.”
-Steven Strogatz, author of Sync, and Professor of Mathematics, Cornell University
“Most people can’t fathom that ants, bees, and other social insects have found solutions to some of modern society’s most vexing problems. In The Smart Swarm, Peter Miller offers a fascinating and articulate tour of what these creatures can do, how they do it, and the lessons for humans. This book is a gem, with a message that is as extraordinarily counter intuitive as it is valuable.”
-Michael J. Mauboussin, Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and author of Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition
“[Peter Miller] has proven that there is intelligent life on earth, but it is not necessarily us. What a delightful, eye-opening book.”
-Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park and Stalin’s Ghost
See all Editorial Reviews
The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done [Hardcover] Book Reviews:
In today’s world of total global competition and global social networks where the future of the world is being discussed, the field of biomimicry is being embraced by leading thinkers in order to capitalize on nature’s hard earned lessons. This book brings those lessons to life and provides a basis for better understanding the true impact of our wired world. After you’ve digested Miller’s work, you may want go further and read Ken Thompson’s . Bioteams reveals how business enterprises, supply chains, high-tech ventures, public sector organizations and not-for-profits are turning to nature’s best designs to create agile, high performing teams –and provides the human protocols that are needed for successful teams.
I loved it and found it captivating.
The book explains how things like ant colonies interact (more interesting than you would think). First thing in the morning the scout ants take off. When they return, the gatherer ants leave but only if there is the right number of scouts returning – not enough or too many at once – danger. And if they find food, they carry it back to the nest and release a scent that other ants follow to find the food. Fascinating.
Ant colonies accomplish great things (especially termites that build termite hills to vent the carbon dioxide from the colony and provide fresh air from the wind).
Although colonies accomplish great things, the individual ants are not too bright.
Case after case in the book (like why birds that flock don’t bump into each other) point out the intelligence of the group even if the individuals only focus on the few individuals around them. They are leaderless groups. Even the bee hive does not have a leader. The queen lays eggs but does not decide where they live or where the food is. Specialists each do their job.
So how does this relate to business? Studies have shown that the collective group is more intelligent than the individual.
So what does this say about the CEO or leader? As I always knew – often a leader can hinder decision making. It is incumbent on the leader (whether by formal position or just by reputation/expertise) to make others feel worthy of speaking up. And in many senses, minimizing themselves so the group can make the best decision.
Awesome book – captivating read.
I listened to the author on NPR. This is no doubt a well researched treatise on animal bahavior. Admittedly, ‘going along with the crowd’ is possibly one of the strongest human traits, other than sexual opportunism, and self aggrandizement.
Like most so called scientists today, animal behavior is studied with the specific intention to explain and define human behavior, and why we behave as we do. This is all nice and fine as long as we all believe that …”Life was an accident, there is no divine creator, no judgment day, no heaven or hell.” ( That’s NPR and Public TV in one sentence – and our our education system, all rolled up into one neat world view ).
There is only one small fly in this erudite ointment: we are expected to transcend our animal nature. God Himself said so plainly, and so did His Son, the Co-Creator ” who said so in plain language.
First God: ” Come out from among them, and be a separate person, and I will take you in”. And Jesus: ” Wide is the gate and wide is the road that leads to perdition ( destruction ); Narrow is the gate, and narrow the way to Heaven – and few there be that find it”.
This is especially true today. All we have to do is see on the news, those folks lining up at the store at midnight to be the ‘first’ to receive the iPad….and therefore, be considered “cool”, “acceptable”, “hip”, “knowledgable”…when in fact 98% of this very population is woefully misguided and misinformed.
This was made so by systmatically eliminating the name of God, or Jesus, nor any mention of the book of Genesis, the account of how we all came to be, as dictated by God personally to Moses. Now, when anyone, like me, comes forward to draw one’s attention to the opposite of what this book teaches, we are considered shabby, backward, ignorant, wild eyed nutballs, with signs saying “the end of the world is near”…we are not like that…but we are heard from so rarely, this is the immediate picture ‘the crowd’, the ‘swarm’ has of anyone even mentioning Genesis.
Yes…we do have a powerful animal nature. But we are strongly advised to transcend that overwhelming tendency to look at our neighbor and do what our neighbor is doing. ( This only leads to : “My neighbor is coveting my ass…therefore, I will covet his ass” …see how absurd this is? )
The evolutionists thinks this is somehow ” blessed, pure, and holy”, since it has gone on for, they assume, “billions of years”. It has not. First John, First Chapter, First Verse : ” Jesus was there at the Creation of the World”. This world is somewhere between 10 and 5 thousand years old. Dinosaurs walked the earth in Adam’s day, and for the 9 generations after him…and were all buried in mud all a-jumble, as we find them today, in places like the Gobi, and Dinosaur National Monument. These huge animals were mobile enough to escape the flood waters for a while, but eventually were all washed away, en masse, and buried in muck, en masse. This is how we find fossils today, and this is why they are all piled up helter skelter for miles…in now dessicated regions of the planet where the fossils were laid down.
We behave like animals…but we are strongly advised not to do so.
Buy this book, and study this book.Understand this phenomena. And then, observe what role this behavioral mechanism plays in our culture today – namely the “Dumbing Down of America”. Case in point: as you take your lunch break, and get away from your cubicle, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, see how many late model cars you can identify. Do not look at the front or back where you may find a distincitve grill shape or a logo…but just the sides. I’m certain you will have great difficulty distinguishing between a Lexus, say, and a Hyundai…or anything else for that matter. We are in what I call “The Non- Descript Generation”. Listen carefully totoday’s music, and observe how virtually all the melodies descend 3 or 4 notes, and repeat; and that goes from a resonably soft first verse, to a whiny anguished cry, and there remains repeating the same lame melody line. Case in point: Rihanna’s “Ooh Baby, I’m a Rock Star”, which she performed on Am. Idol, singign the exact same lyric, andlame, descending, simplistic melody about 60 times. I lost count. Do you not see all this as “Swarm Behavior”? Monkey see, monkey do? Inciddentally, before you think I heartily approve of church folk…I do not. They too behave as a “swarm”…dumb peopel following other dumb people, imagining that they are on some sort of Carnival cruise to Heaven, and think themselves “In Like Flynn”, simply because they are “hanging” with a group that will swarm into eaven. They will not. God is not impressed with mindless copy cats. And listen to modern “praise and worship music” if you really want to hear some incredibly dumb music full of whining sycophants, fawning on the Lord…which He detests.
I had a very low rating for this book – one star – but bumped it back up. This nice , soft spoken author has invested a huge amount of time and money in this book. And now it’s sink or swim for him. I don’t want the poor guy to sink. So I encourage you to buy the book. But not to imagine in any way that it is a desirable way to behave. It is not. As outlined above, you will find yoursef ‘swarming with your peers into Hell”. Do NOT, repeat Not – follow the crowd. The crowd is dumb as a bag of rocks. This is the problem I have with the book…its title shuld be “The Dumb Swarm”. The mindless swarm…the blithering idiot swarm.