BOOK REVIEW: 'The Smart Swarm'
Ants, Bees, Birds Can Teach Humans About Communication, Organization, Decision Making
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
.... Birds do it, Bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it, Let's do it, let's fall in love --- "Let's Do It" by Cole Porter, 1928
With apologies to the immortal Mr. Porter, the "Smart Swarming' of termites, birds and honeybees can teach a modern world obsessed with speed and high-tech gadgets a thing or two about organization -- as well as falling in love. That's the theme of Peter Miller's "The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making and Getting Things Done" (Avery, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), index, notes, 304 pages, $26.00).
The book reads like a National Geographic special -- and I mean that as a compliment -- which makes sense because Miller is a senior editor at National Geographic where he's worked for more than 25 years as a writer and editor. Miller draws on research from around the world on swarms, schools, flocks and even crowds of people to give us a new take on the concept of collective intelligence.
I'm not so sure intelligence was involved in the "Death on the Bridge" segment Miller writes about on pages 239-248 -- describing people being trampled to death on a bridge in Mecca, Saudi Arabia during a ceremony performed during the annual Hajj (pilgrimage) that devout Muslims are required to take once in a lifetime. In 2004, some 249 people were crushed to death on a narrow span in the ritual stoning ceremony. Two years later, a bottleneck occurred on the bridge and 363 men and women were dead, including a few security guards. The horrific death toll prompted a study and redesign of the bridge, using staggered start times to prevent too many people from going through at the same time. There were no trampled people at the next hajj after the redesign in late 2006.
I doubt that the ants that Southwest Airlines had in mind would have had casualty rates of the hajj pilgrims, because they can handle crowded situations better than humans. That's why ants of a sort were used when Southwest was mulling whether or not to abandon their long-held policy of open seating on planes Southwest Airlines had used the free-for-all seating for 34 years, Miller writes, but some business travelers complained that it was no fun for road warriors. And fun is what Southwest is all about (it's my favorite airline), with flight attendants telling jokes and engaging the passengers in in-flight games (plus they don't charge for checked or carry-on luggage).
Southwest Airlines analyst Doug Lawson figured the best way to determine whether or not to continue the open-seating policy or go to what other major airlines had continued to do, assign seat numbers to passengers. He wanted to use a computer simulation and he decided to base it on ants.
"Ants were a good fit for this study," Lawson said, "because we had all these individuals pouring into a tight space, interacting with one another. Every individual had a task to do -- in this case, obtain a seat -- while dealing with all the others doing the same thing. In a way, it was a typical biological problem."
Lawson's digital "ants" were allowed to go down the jet ramp and wander about the plane. The fact that Southwest flies only Boeing 737 aircraft simplified things, Miller writes. In the interest of spoilers, I won't give away the results, but the next time I fly Southwest out of Houston Hobby Airport I'll remember the digital ants.
Miller introduces thriving throngs of real ant colonies, which have inspired computer programs for streamlining factory processes, telephone networks, and truck routes; termites, used in recent studies for climate-control solutions; schools of fish, on which the U.S. military modeled a team of robots; and many other examples of the wisdom to be gleaned about the behavior of crowds-among critters and corporations alike.
If you liked Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" or "The Tipping Point" or Matthew E. May's "The Pursuit of Elegance" -- which I just reviewed on this site -- Peter Miller's "The Smart Swarm" will get you to thinking about the "wisdom of crowds" in a way you never did before. Martin Cruz Smith, author of "Gorky Park" and "Stalin's Ghost" says it all in a blurb on the dust jacket: "[Peter Miller] has proven that there is intelligent life on earth, but it is not necessarily us...."
Author's website: www.thesmartswarm.com
Publisher's website: www.penguin.com