Indirect coordination in which traces one agent leaves in a shared environment stimulate further activity by the same or other agents. Coined by the French zoologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959, from Greek stigma (mark) and ergon (work), to describe how termites build complex mounds without central direction. Francis Heylighen later extended the concept to human coordination, including Wikipedia and open-source software. Within the BioConomy corpus, stigmergy names the mechanism by which instruments like the BioScore, the Tenderable Services Portfolio, and the Templates carry coordination without central command.
Related terms
- Mycelial Coordination
- Substrate Hypothesis
- E Form (Emergent)
- Legibility Signal
- Coordination Node
- Human Coordination
- BioScore
Related pages
Sources
- Grassé, P.-P. (1959). La reconstruction du nid et les coordinations inter-individuelles chez Bellicositermes natalensis et Cubitermes sp.
- Heylighen, F. (2016). Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism.