Don Tapscott. Smart Swarm: Using Animal Behaviour to Organise Our World
Smart Swarm. Peter Miller
Table of Contents
FOREWORD BY DON TAPSCOTT
INTRODUCTION WHEN IN DOUBT, TURN TO THE EXPERTS
1 ANTS Who’s in Charge Here?
2 HONEYBEES Making Smart Decisions
3 TERMITES One Thing Leads to Another
4 BIRDS OF A FEATHER Secrets of Flocks, Schools, and Herds
5 LOCUSTS The Dark Sides of Crowds
CONCLUSION Doing the Right Thing
NOTES. Foreword
Introduction
1. Ants
2. Honeybees
3. Termites
4. Birds of a Feather
5. Locusts
Conclusion
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Copyright
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
Foreword by Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics
Title Page
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“When I went back to Milan to discuss these ideas with Professor Alberto Colorni, who was supervising my work, he asked me to write a simple program as a proof of principle, to show it wasn’t just a crazy idea,” Dorigo says. At the time, Dorigo was working on a class of mathematical puzzles known as combinatorial optimization problems, which are relatively easy to describe but deceptively difficult to solve. One of the best-known examples is the traveling salesman problem, which involves the following scenario: A salesman needs to visit customers in a number of cities. What’s the shortest path he can take to visit each city once before returning back home?
When the problem involves just a few cities—let’s say, Moscow, Hong Kong, and Paris—you can figure out the answer on the back of an envelope. Leaving from the airport near his home in Cleveland, the salesman has three options for his first stop: Moscow, Hong Kong, or Paris. Let’s say he chooses Hong Kong. From there he has two choices: Moscow or Paris. Let’s say he flies to Paris. That leaves only Moscow before he can fly home. If you made a list of all the other possible sequences (such as Paris to Moscow to Hong Kong, or Moscow to Hong Kong to Paris, and so on), you would have a total of six to consider. Compare the mileage for each sequence and you have your answer.
