A01=Sebastian Vehlken
animal collectives
animal group dynamics
animal psychology
Author_Sebastian Vehlken
behavioral biology
Category=JBCT
Category=NH
collective behaviour
computational modelling
computer simulation
cultural techniques
cybernetics
emergent systems
epistemic things
epistemology
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
marine biology laboratories
media history
media theory
media theory swarm intelligence
oriented particles
robotics applications
self-organisation theory
sensory systems
simulation of biological collectives
social instinct
Product details
- ISBN 9781041191001
- Weight: 740g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Swarming has become a fundamental cultural technique related to dynamic processes and an effective metaphor for the collaborative efforts of society. This book examines the media history of swarm research and its significance to current socio-technological processes. It shows that the hype about collective intelligence is based on a reciprocal computerization of biology and biologization of computer science: After decades of painstaking biological observations in the ocean, experiments in aquariums, and mathematical model-making, it was swarms-inspired computer simulation which provided biological researchers with enduring knowledge about animal collectives. At the same time, a turn to biological principles of self-organization made it possible to adapt to unclearly delineated sets of problems and clarify the operation of opaque systems - from logistics to architecture, or from crowd control to robot collectives. As zootechnologies, swarms offer performative, synthetic, and approximate solutions in cases where analytical approaches are doomed to fail.
Sebastian Vehlken is a media theorist and cultural historian at Leuphana University Lüneburg and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS).
