antarchia

About

Submitted by antarchi on May 6, 2007 - 13:33

Antarchia is the private collection and blog of a disenchanted ant. It is made up mostly from 'nuggets' of information taken from books and articles that should be widely known, but aren't. The nuggets have been selected to suit the 21st century attention span, but all connect up to the original sources (the reading of which requires a bit more time and concentration).

The aim in selecting and posting this collection was partly personal: these are bits of information that I needed to remember, and then be able to find again. But there is also a hope... that if only the nuggets were more widely known and remembered then they might shock and wake enough attention spans to serve some purpose.

  • See the FAQ for a bit more on the site
  • Go to the nuggets page to find out how best to search for them
  • Send a message to the ants, or send along your own choice nuggets here. I can always do with more collectors.

antarchi

Courtiers Close Ranks

Submitted by antarchi on April 28, 2007 - 14:00

Don't Dismantle Our Empire!
His Clothes Are Fine!
And You Are Naked!

the hidden hand of the market?

Submitted by antarchi on April 24, 2007 - 17:35

The Principle of Emergence

“…the ant queen does not direct an army of drones. Drones take direction from a small set of simple signals released by other drones. A drone collecting food leaves behind a special scent, and other drones that pick up that scent will follow the path to the food source. The most direct path to the food becomes the most successful and so pragmatic behavior helps drones to “determine” the best path to take. No one drone knows where the food is or has a map of the terrain, nor does the queen: the emergent system is smarter than the individual members of the colony and acts as an effective decision-making process.”

That's fine for a system. Very good, in fact. Of course you can forget about ant-rights, and you can forget about systems outside that system - like Africa, Antarchia, or the year 2088. Ants, at least, are limited (for the moment) by their physical capabilities: British ants can't reach the food sources of African ants. But if they ever could, and if they became capable of carrying home far more than they could ever consume themselves, building themselves ant-butter mountains, ant-European fortresses, ant-weapons of mass destruction to keep the other anthills under their control...

Which little British ants would be prepared to stop the march to the food source?

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