Stigmergic Collaboration

PhD Completed!!!

2007-10-16T01:51:00.000-07:00

Examined, bound and submitted - and what a good feeling it is!

I thought I might provide a general overview of my dissertation for those interested.

I was supervised by Elizabeth Presa, Sean Cubitt and Warren Burt and was examined by Howard Rheingold and Francis Heylighen. You can read the examination reports here.

Stigmergic Collaboration: A Theoretical Framework for Mass Collaboration

Abstract (first paragraph)

'This thesis presents an application-oriented theoretical framework for generalised and specific collaborative contexts with a special focus on Internet-based mass collaboration. The proposed framework is informed by the author's many years of collaborative arts practice and the design, building and moderation of a number of online collaborative environments across a wide range of contexts and applications. The thesis provides transdisciplinary architecture for describing the underlying mechanisms that have enabled the emergence of mass collaboration and other activities associated with 'Web 2.0' by incorporating a collaboratively developed definition and general framework for collaboration and collective activity, as well as theories of swarm intelligence, stigmergy, and distributed cognition.' >> full abstract

The core insight of the thesis is that mass collaboration (Wikipedia, open source software, Second Life etc) enables a shift from social to cultural negotiation, shattering the traditional glass ceiling of collaborative participation from approximately 25 members maximum, towards hundreds of thousands and beyond.

Social negotiation is the means by which all traditional collaboration takes place and is characterised by turn-taking communication. In the case of mass collaboration, a digital workspace mediates participant interaction, providing stigmergic cues to negotiate contributions via the various literacies associated with digital technologies and the particular workspace's norms, languages and 'netiquette'. While this does not preclude turn-taking communication, it places the interactive focus on cultural information which serves as the first point of engagement.

In other words, the workspace acts as a boundary object that removes social barriers to participation in online contexts (establishing, negotiating and maintaining social relations with thousands of people) and streamlines the creative process through providing a single site of work to a theoretically infinite number of participants.

Many other themes and sub-frameworks contribute to the overall work such as

an in depth review of the state of stigmergy research and applications;
a original, general theory of collective activity;
an etymologically researched, cross-disciplinary, collaboratively informed definition of collaboration and the beginnings of a general theory of collaboration;
a framework for understanding indirect, mediated communication;
the documentation of a number of real-world projects which apply and test the findings of the thesis;
and of course, a framework for mass collaboration which integrates the above as well as preexisting frameworks and theories.

The dissertation may be downloaded (a 30MB, 242 page PDF), or browsed online in its entirety.

I would love to hear your opinions, so please feel free to comment!

[note: this post is also mirrored at my site mark-elliott.net and my other blog, Mass Collaboration.]

technorati tags:
phd collaboration mass collaboration stigmergic collaboration stigmergy

PhD Is Done! (almost)

2007-09-13T05:23:00.000-07:00

I got my examination reports back for my PhD thesis, Stigmergic Collaboration: A theoretical framework for mass collaboration, and the prognosis is good!

Both of my extraordinarily esteemed examiners, Howard Rheingold and Francis Heylighen, have recommended that I be awarded my doctorate without further amendment. I am ecstatic and honored to have received such positive reviews from two of my personal heroes of original thought and research.

In the coming weeks I will be reviving this blog and mirroring the content at mark-elliott.net as well. I'm thinking of doing a blog series on my thesis - breaking it into more bite size chunks with links into the larger work. However I need to give this a bit more thought first. In the mean time, please feel free to peruse the online version of my thesis here: http://mark-elliott.net/view/Dissertation

- The (almost) in the title is due to the fact that I still need to submit bound hard copies to the university, and well, I still have the formal ceremony before I can legitimately prefix my name with the good ole 'Dr' :-).

Stigmergic Collaboration is moving house

2006-11-28T04:37:00.000-08:00

I've moved this blog to http://mark-elliott.net/view/Blog

Here's an orientation message.

If you are only interested in my research activities (such as stigmergy and collaboration) you might want to focus on the material in the Research category: http://mark-elliott.net/view/Blog/Research

I'm working on a custom rss feed for the categories only, but alas, it has not yet happened. Untill then, I'm sorry but you'll have to filter the many posts about my baby twin boys! ;-).

I've got only 5 months to finish my PhD, so I'll be cranking up the stigmergy blogging in the next week or two...

Human Stigmergy Part 1

2006-08-03T00:50:00.000-07:00

(An illegal tyre dump, near Newcastle, Australia estimated to hold over 10,000 tyres.)

As far as my explorations have uncovered, little to no research has been done on applying stigmergy to human activity and communication. There have been a few very brief mentions here and there, the most significant in some ways being by Theraulaz & Bonabeau in "A Breif History of Stigmergy" from Artificial Life journal, Volume 5, Issue 2 - Spring 1999, page 102:

Chemical trails that are produced by some ants species [10, 23] muleteer trail networks, and even dirt tracks and trail systems in man [31, 32] result from interactions of this kind.

[31 refers to Modelling the evolution of human trail systems, Dirk Hebling, Joachim Keltsch & Peter Molnar; while 32 refers to Active walker model for the formation of human and animal trail systems, Dirk Helbing, Frank Schweitzer, Joachim Keltsch, Péter Molnár]

Another excellent mention of human stigmergy, although less formal, is in the comment posted by Dylan Shell to Joe Gregorio's great blog post on stigmergy. Here he says:

Another example, perhaps just as old, and even more damaging in some cases, is the process with which people choose illegal dumping grounds. A necessary feature is some degree of seclusion, or at least shelter from the prying eyes of the law. However, we find that once a place has been chosen by some offender, their dump adds a stronger justification to others for that site.

Time in the desert

2006-07-11T17:40:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a trip to the Northern Territory in Australia's outback where I had plenty of time to think about stigmergy. It will probably take a little time for my many thoughts to coalesce into something more articulate (I pondered a good deal on human stigmergy). In the mean time, there were many beautiful termite nests (above), and ant nests (below) to witness.

However I was there as part of an IBM sponsored program, SWIRL program run by Lawry Mahon (a living legend IMHO).

(left to right) Andrew Hocking - Corporate Community Relations Manager, IBM Australia, and Lawry Mahon - SWIRL Program Coordinator, Victoria University School of Education

We visited five different indigenous communities in which groups of student teachers were developing digital stories with young indigenous students.

My role was/is to help develop an online (stigmergic) collaborative environment for this course. Having run now for 11 years without hitch and with a great many success stories, I'm hoping this wonderful bunch of people and fantastic program will provide an excellent environment for exploring stigmergic collaboration across geographic, political and cultural borders.

Schools of babbling disembodied AIBOs surfing the web waves

2006-06-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

In an article on Embodied and Communicating Agents, this paragraph:

"...like children, the [Sony] AIBOs initially started babbling aimlessly until two or more settled on a sound to describe an object or aspect of their environment, gradually building a lexicon and grammatical rules through which to communicate."

...made me wonder what would happen if such learning and communicating agents were disembodied and distributed throughout the web.

Schooling web-bots communicating about 'objects' they discover and interact with on the net might help understand and navigate the web in ways that could harness the intelligence of evolutionary computing and provide a swarms-eye, multi-dimensional view of the state of the global electronic stigmergic substrate.

Perhaps the researchers are alluding to this when they said:

"The results of the project might trigger significant breakthroughs in many future and emergent technologies, from self-developing robots to the semantic web and ubiquitous wireless devices."

...or maybe I'm just imagining things. Anyway this is just plain funny (if not suggestively metaphorical some how) - movie of a real dog attacking a robot dog.

Stigmergy, Institutions, Law, & Cooperation Part 1: The Panopticon

2006-06-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

Reading the article, Pentagon Sets Its Sights on Social Networking Websites,

"New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks."

by Paul Marks prompted me to review the notion of the panopticon within the contexts of stigmergy. This will no doubt require a number of visits (hence 'Part 1').

First proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century, a panopticon is a building that allows an observer to observe all the occupants without them being able to tell if they are being observed. Although the design did not bear fruit during Bentham's lifetime, the panopticon (originally designed to create self-monitoring in prisoner communities) did receive important analysis by Michel Foucault in his work Discipline and Punish. Foucault theorised that the evolution of all forms of institution required a specific type of discipline that observes without excessive force, and based upon these observations, shapes the subject into the correct form for the institution doing the observation. He further reasons that this specific type of discipline was exemplified by Bentham's Panopticon.

Howard Rheingold picked up this theme in his book, Smart Mobs, under the chapter, Always-On Panopticon...or Cooperation Amplifier. He explores the ways in which pervasive, networked communications and infrastructure can contribute towards the emergence of novel modes and means of cooperation, or/and provide the framework towards and 'always-on panopticon', even perhaps more far reaching in its applications than Foucault even suspected. You can read many interesting blogs relating to this theme here.

So, how does stigmergy increase or decrease the ability for panopticonic discipline, and is this good or bad? Well... structured social information always enables our collective capacity create or exploit patterned (recurring) behavior through the spontaneous generation of values, beliefs and norms, which are generally reflected through a society's institutions and laws. Whether in a hunter gatherer tribe in Western Australia, or at the International Court of Justice, institutions make laws which require enforcement by institutions. This dynamic forms a recursive relationship which not only dictates when you can turn right on a red, but who, when, where, how and why people can and can't work, sleep, socialize and stigmergically cooperate with one another.

In the contexts of the tripartite stigmergic organisation of agent-environment-superorganism, the environment (nest) becomes the medium for information encoding by the individual agents (ants) to be interpreted by the superorganism (hive). Of course we are still unsure of the role of the superorganism with respects to humanity (and hives), regardless, the theory remains useful when considering the web, wiki or social network sites. The very fact that information is being stigmergically encoded allows the superorganism (collections of people) the possibility and probability to both create and exploit that information through patterned behavior and the creation of institutions, laws and cooperation.

As we all know, cooperation can work for the 'dark side' as much as for good, as can institutions and laws and well... just about anything subjected to the human will. The fact that global stigmergy may be emerging as a primary driver for the evolution of collaboration, cooperation and humanity in general, should be a cue to us all that both the good, the bad (and the beautiful) may become increasingly powerful as their ability to spontaneously generate new institutions, laws and cooperation is amplified.

Defining Collaboration

2006-06-08T23:04:00.000-07:00

Before one can get too far discussing stigmergic collaboration, one will quickly find that defining the process of ‘collaboration’ is very slippery. In fact, very little cross-disciplinary research has been done towards investigating and understanding this process. What little research has taken place, has happened within the context of a particular discipline such as education, science, artificial intelligence etc. As a result, the outcomes often heavily reflect the interests of that particular discipline. - To date, there exists no 'general theory of collaboration'. Consequently, the definition of the process of collaboration has become a central issue for my research.

In an ordinary dictionary, one finds a definition along the lines of, ‘two or more people working together to achieve a common goal.’ This is very broad indicating that anything from a friendship, to a university, to a city or nation may qualify. In fact, upon further investigation, one may even begin to doubt whether or not this type of definition should be limited to humans — many other social creatures work together to achieve common goals in some way or another. However, based upon research into the many fields where the topic is discussed (and in order to keep my research focused) I’ve narrowed my own notions of a collaboration to:

The process of two or more people thinking, planning, deciding, working and acting together in order to create a shared emergent understanding, process and or outcome that reflects the interests and input of the total body of contributors.

The focus on an emergent shared understanding for me harbours much of the mystery and potential of this ubiquitous phenomenon, for in my opinion and experience, it is the emergent shared understanding that distinguishes collaboration from cooperation, and even provides a means to at least partially overcome the existential barrier of subjective experience.

For more on collaboration, and indeed to collaborate on the definition of collaboration, see the MetaCollab article on collaboration.

I will post on the darker side of collaboration’s etymological history soon…

The Individual as Collective: stimulated by the performance one has achieved

2006-06-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

The content of this post has been collaboratively developed with Elizabeth Presa.

I ended a past post, Some General Off-the-Cuff Reflections on Stigmergy with the reflection: "as I paste all this jabber into my private wiki, I realized that stigmergy doesn’t have to be social, that is, the communication can be with oneself…" This got me thinking about the use of the process of stigmergy by and for the individual. I post to my own wiki (behind a firewall) for the purposes of archiving, but more so in order to further develop my ideas for the eventual compilation of my PhD dissertation.

By doing work in my wiki which I can then reflect on in the future, I am able to stigmergically communicate with myself. I got to discussing this issue with my PhD supervisor, Elizabeth Presa, and we quickly realised that there are some fundamental connections between 'auto stigmergy' and the creative/artistic process. That is, a fundamental component of this process is the reflection upon and the reworking of one's reifications.

These realisations prompted many more... If stigmergy seemingly works in relation to a single individual, could the workings of an individual have aspects in common with that of a collective? Would it need to for the stigmergic process to operate? Was this process in fact stigmergy or some other closely related phenomenon - if so, what is it?

I later came across this paper Artificial Ant Colonies in Digital Image Habitats - A Mass Behaviour Effect Study on Pattern Recognition which suggests that, "the self-organization of neurons into brain-like structures, and the self-organization of ants into a swarm are similar in many respects." This idea of the individual mind as a collective is of course not new, and our brains are composed of hundreds of billions of neurons as well as many varying components which to some degree specialise in various functions. So perhaps it should not be so surprising that stigmergy could function in relation to the individual mind as it does to the many. Perhaps a type of intersubjectivity exists between the many aspects of one’s mind in a similar way as it does between the minds of many individuals?

As any artist could attest to, one doodles, sketches, drafts and after a time, this work stimulates the emergence and gives voice to an idea that previously hasn't had the opportunity to find a material form. This is the stuff of inspiration, of the creative spark - what once wasn't, suddenly is… or rather, is suddenly becoming.

This brings us to serendipity (thanks Julen!). As I'm sure every artist (and probably most people) could attest that when the creative spark flashes, there is often something serendipitous about it - the result is unexpected and seems to be 'perfect', it 'fits just right', etc. In the context of a work of art, it is the serendipitous inspirational flashes that seem (at least for me) to draw together, kick start and breath life into what eventually may come to be a coherent work with a character and nature all its own.

Blogging = Stigmergy

2006-05-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

To whom is this blog addressed? Everyone, no one?.. Yes.

Stigmergy is indirect communication, that is, communication which is not based on transmission to a specific receiver, but rather to a general audience (Paranak, 2002 - PDF). Not only is stigmergic communication indirect, but it is also many to many, which means not only is the stigmergic medium readable by 'everyone' but it is also writable by that same audience.

Well, blogs are indirect communication to be sure, but are they writable? Utilising the comment function makes them more so, and the fact that anyone with web access can start a blog for free in minutes, means they can respond to the blogosphere's stimuli with their own blog. Of course bloggers respond directly to other bloggers' posts with thoughts, ideas and information which is perhaps directed very specifically to another blogger, but, anyone else passing by can also read this post. This difference is highlighted by the distinction between a blog and an email - if two bloggers email responses to each other, then other bloggers and readers are left out of the conversation. This is not stigmergy.

I'll give a real-world example of stigmergic blogging in this very post.

Although I decided to write about this theme (blogging and stigmergy) independently, I nevertheless did a search and came up with a few others discussing the same issue on their blogs. Below is a beautiful (and well linked to) metaphor posted by Joe Gregorio describing what I'm doing right now:

"If this weren't on the web, what would be the closest analogy for what I am doing [blogging]? Writing my thoughts and ideas down on a chalkboard on a street corner is the closest I can come. Imaging a street with chalkboards mounted at random points along the thoroughfare. I write my stuff on my chalkboard. Other people have their own chalkboards on the same street. Sometimes I walk by their boards, read what they have to say and if I find it interesting then either I scribble a little note on their board (if their weblog has a comment system) otherwise I run back to my board and scribble a note about what I read 'over there' and what I think about it. If I find something interesting happening on the street I go back to my board and write about it. We never speak directly. We only communicate through the boards. Writing on our own boards, or scribbling even smaller notes on other peoples boards is the only way we converse."

What Joe described is exactly what I did by visiting his blog and writing about that visit on my blog. And just as he states, we have never exchanged words in any form of direct conversation, rather we have only communicated through our blogs - so far ;-).

If we are engaging in stigmergy via blogging, then how are gradients of the human equivalent of pheromones being generated? - pheromones being the means through which termites stigmergically communicate. Furthermore, what is the substance of these gradients? Information, reputation, network value? As stigmergy was originally coined with regard to the study of social insects, perhaps more research is required to adequately apply this term to human affairs. More on this in the soon to be released post "Human Stigmergy"...

Stigmergically collaborate on stigmergic collaboration

2006-05-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

You are invited to MetaCollab.net to contribute to the open content version of the article Stigmergic Collaboration: The Evolution of Group Work.

The original, static HTML version of the article is here.

Defining Stigmergy Part 1

2006-05-23T17:37:00.000-07:00

Something I keep coming back to is 'how far can/should the term stigmergy be extended?' The concept in general seems applicable to so much of human endeavour that I am concerned that without focusing, the term risks being watered down to the point of ineffectuality.

The original definition given by French biologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959 to refer to termite behaviour was: "Stimulation of workers by the performance they have achieved." From the broadest interpretation of this definition, culture itself seems to qualify as stigmergy - human workers modify our surroundings and in turn are stimulated to do more and better. However if one is to apply the term in a focused and useful manner, such a broad definition is no doubt problematic in that it leaves little scope for such distinctions as stigmergy on the internet vs. in culture etc. Never mind the fact that all organisms stimulate their brethren through the performance they have achieved at least in evolutionary terms.

So it should have come as no surprise after doing some hunting around that many researchers have addressed the issue of defining stigmergy. I discovered a nice little Power Point poster by Dylan Shell and Maja Matarić: On the use of the term ‘Stigmergy’ (.ppt). (Here's an HTML version, however it lacks all the references.) This poster shows that not only is the definition up for contest, with confusion over whether communication takes place indirectly or at all, but so is the term's etymology. Below are some variations on the terms origins (see the poster for references):

"‘stigma’ (goad) and ‘ergon’ (work)…” to “…stigmergy (stigma: Wound from a pointed object; ergon: Work, product of labour = stimulating product of labour).”
“from the Greek words stigma ‘sign’ and ergon ‘action,’ and captures the notion that an agent’s actions leave signs in the environment, signs that it and other agents sense and that determine their subsequent actions.”
“[F]rom the Greek stigma: sting, and ergon: work.”

Perhaps some of the more interesting research done with regards to stigmergic collaboration that is highlighted in the poster is the various categorisations thus far developed in research:

Holland and Melhuish [1999] define two subtypes:
Active: actions affect sensory inputs of others
Passive: actions affect the outcome of later actions

Bonabeau, et al. [1999], distinguish:
Qualitative: sensory inputs differ by type
Quantitative: sensory inputs differ by degree

Wilson [1975], draw the distinction between
Sematectonic: change in state result of task-related action
Sign-based: (or marker-based) result of something that makes no contribution to the task

As the authors of the poster point out, Grassé's original understanding of stigmergy then becomes further defined as: Active, Qualitative Sematectonic stigmergy - that's a mouthful. More on this in Part 2.

Some General Off-the-Cuff Reflections on Stigmergy

2006-05-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

Below are some general thoughts inspired by Samuel Rose's response to my article, Stigmergic Collaboration.

* Agents of a stigmergic system don't communicate directly, but rather via the stigmergic medium. The nature of this communication would thus not be one of turn-taking conversation, but rather, “I encounter something in the system that provokes x response from me”. However turn-taking conversation would accompany such efforts: "hey Joe, check out my wiki... can you contribute x" etc, and of course discussion relating to contributions. (Have you ever watched ants when they meet each other on the trail? They almost always stop and touch antennas.)

* The local is the domain of the individual agent, while the system wide level likely to be beyond the individual's comprehension (or ability to conceptualize at any given moment). This resonates when thinking about the origins of stigmergy - how can a single termite know where to put a wee bit of mud so as to contribute to a fantastically complex structure - it doesn't, it just responds to its local conditions – a particular pheromone in an existing bit of mud elicits the response of ‘roll mud ball with x pheromone and deposit here’. Although a whole might be distributed beyond the reach of the individual (I know MetaCollab.net is already too much for me to know the ins and outs of all its corners), perhaps knowledge of the whole might be naturally broken up into chunks relating to user groups. - If you want to know about x, find the group that stigmergically develops and maintains x and ask them collectively. (An idea which might be worth better supporting in wikis etc – this could also feed Reed’s Law.)

* Filtering... hmm, seems like that is what stigmergy kind of does naturally. That is, when the local gets stigmergically encoded, a filtering process takes place before the encoding does - how do I know what I will encode? I will encode that which is the most meaningful for me in that context. Thus aggregated meaning must emit gradients of reputation which attracts more contributors. - Seems this might also be an area worth exploring: how to build the increase of positive feedback and attract more contributors into today's stigmergic collaboration systems.

* Intuitively I feel there is something big, complex and hairy lurking behind the combination of network theory (mathematical & social) and stigmergy. Perhaps this is humanity’s real contribution to the medium - not that swarm insects aren't social and networky, but let's face it, we have the internet ;-)

* Finally, as I paste all this jabber into my private wiki, I realized that stigmergy doesn’t have to be social, that is, the communication can be with oneself…

Ground Zero

2006-05-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

This blog will serve as a locus for the working through of ideas related to the development of my research and understanding of stigmergic collaboration as originally outlined in my article, Stigmergic Collaboration: the evolution of group work. This is also likely to form the backbone of my PhD at the Centre for Ideas which is currently half completed (two-ish more years to go). I welcome any and all comments relevant to these posts and consider my work collaborative by nature. As such, another locus for the development of my research is at MetaCollab.net - a collaborative research project focusing on the development of collaborative research across disciplines with the long-term aims of producing a general theory of collaboration.

I consider the backdrop/context of my research to be that of 'cooperation studies', most notably developed by the CooperationCommons to which I contribute, however my research and orientation is decidedly transdisciplinary.

More to come soon…