Novel Stigmergy Structures in the Internet The Web is a vast
collection of software multicellular organisms. Novel stigmergy
structures are growing in the Internet and exerting their
organizing power in new ways. The vast messaging structure
called the Internet harbors many multicellular digital
structures. More evolve every year. Linux source code, for
example, can be thought of as a software termite mound, that is,
a new kind of digital stigmergy structure. code is organized by
the “blessed” Concurrent Versions System (CVS) repository that
is under the control of the Linux “inner circle” (Linus
Torvalds, Alan Cox, etc). Clearly, the Linux CVS code tree is
both built by, and helps to organize the efforts of, the
worldwide community of Linux programmers. Classic stigmergy!
Before the Open-Source revolution, it was pretty much taken for
that large-scale, robust software had to be built by a
corporation to its success. The corporation provided a co-
located stigmergy structure of servers, programmers, buildings,