Copied over from the original site
This page was written for the original site in 2003. However, most of the content here is highly relevant today and is a strong influence on our current project strategies.
Notice particularly the article on Weblogs. This was the only way to track website visitor behaviour in those days, yet the methods and strategies suggested here are almost identical to the sophisticated strategies recommended to marketeers using Google Analytics today.
Technical notes
The main outline of a stigmergic system is explained in the top menu link 'Example project'. This is the intial project designed to demonstrate the "proof of concept".
This section of the site is for participants and partners in this project and further projects that will be started in 2004. It provides articles and tutorials that may help explain some of the more technical details involved in creating stigmergic systems. The links on the left provide most of the information participants will need.
Appologies for the writing style, the articles were written for internal use and haven't been optimized for easy reading.
To emulate the evolutionary strategy of biological systems, a program is used to continuously generate new versions of a Web site. This program is described in the link 'Organic Web site prototyping'. How this program is used is explained in the tutorial 'Harnessing the power of stigmergy' and in the link 'Intelligent use of Web logs'.
The link 'Self-organization' and the tutorial 'Harnessing the power of stigmergy' outline the theory behind the deployment of stigmergy in stigmergic systems. The link 'Designing a Kempelen Box' provides an example and a simple explanation of the way in which an agent system can evolve to improve its effectiveness and efficiency.
A good mental model for how information flows around the Internet is provided in the link Small world clustering'. A more abstract overview, of an evolving stigmergic system, is explained in the link 'Biological system design'.
There are many different interpretations as to what is meant by self-organization. The link 'Self-organization' provides a description as to how we are understanding it here.