Swarm Intellegence and Bonabeau

[Reposted from Get Real, from 9 July 2003]

Reading an interview of Eric Bonabeau (Icosystems founder and CTO) by Derrick Story regarding Bonabeau research into social insects, and the applicability of swarm intelligence to human concerns. (Pointer from Dan Williams).

A great comment from Bonabeau regarding the reluctance of business management to accept the notion of bottom-up, emergent solutions to thorny problems:

Managers would rather live with a problem they can’t solve than with a solution they don’t fully understand or control.