Who is in-charge?– from the perspective of Bees and Blockchains – Info Gadgets

The moment we get in the group, one of the first questions to be heard is “Who’s in-charge?” This is a question only for human minds to ponder, while in the meantime honey bees will be busy making their hives, instinctively. Probably, the spiders use similar instincts to weave an indivisible web where every part of the web is connected to every other part. The spiders web is much like our modern-day web , which the future generations, might only know through 3-letters; www. While internet created a new real manifestation of such membrane, the more recent concept of Block-chain harnesses the potential of connection and collaboration among decentralized entities to make the question, “who is incharge?” redundant. Is collective intelligence the new mantra in the age of internet and Block-chain, or was it always there and we are just now realizing the potential?

Karl von Frisch (1886–1982) said, ““The bee’s life is like a magic well: the more you draw from it, the more it fills with water”. It is not only what bees do, but the sheer form of their existence that is purely magical. To convey their messages, they waggle and they dance, and in their waggle dance they encode specific messages. According to Karl von Frisch, recipient of Nobel prize in 1973 for his discovery, Tanzsprache(German for “dance language”) is the information about direction, distance, and quality of a resource (such as food or nesting sites) contained within the waggle dance of the bees. The dancer’s body points in the direction of the food source and the sound produced during the dance indicates the profitability of the food. The other bees receive the information, pollinate the flowers, and return back to create their bee hives together, all without pre-frontal cortex. The making of a bee-hive needs a unique organization between internal roles of queen bee, worker bees, and drone bees, and external positioning of flowers. This entire coordination happens through dance, vibrations, and body chemicals. The process which involves the tiny imperfect bee, and does not include any leader, instead relies on the self-organization of individuals through simple rules of collective intelligence. The final product is the delicious sweet thing called honey. If only we could ask bees, who’s in charge?!

In one way, Blockchains can be termed as human manifestation of the waggle dance of bees. The underlying feature of collective intelligence is trust, just like the bee’s trust each other’s waggle dance, and communicate when not. Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym, digitalized trust with a new interactive invisible layer using Blockchain technology and launched a new peer to peer electronic cash system called Bitcoin in 2008. Simply put, Block-chain is an open, decentralized ledger recording transactions between two parties in a permanent way without needing third-party authentication. With the intention of shifting power structure from an individual, institution or government, Satoshi designed a new system where information is communicated and verified by everyone in the network, and the collective intelligence in a transparent, time-stamped and decentralized system is enabled through simple rules. Just as bees weave bee-hives while being inside the bee-hives using collective intelligence, the miners of Block-chains continually mines new blocks digitizing the idealistic principle of trust. Just like any other system, the long-term success of Blockchain will be dependent upon its interaction with external systems, while some components will potentially disappear, some new more adapt systems might emerge. Blockchain-ers are already telling us not to worry, as no one is in charge.

Whether we see it in nature’s intelligence, or in new emerging technological structure, we are finding that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the question of who’s incharge is unravelling new answers. The structures, patterns, inter-relationality, and the processes are carrying unseen collective intelligence of self-organization and ordering. This is also reflected in the public response to social media, where platforms for interaction such as Facebook and Twitter are triggering new social, and political designs. Even though it might seem intuitive, it is counter to reductionist approach of science where whole can be disintegrated into parts, and it is complementary to the second law of thermodynamics where disorder increases in a closed system. The nature, as we know, cannot be interpreted as simple linear equations. One of the significant progress of last fifty years, is to recognize that nature is non-linear, which as per Fritjof Capra means, “simple deterministic equations may produce an unsuspected richness and variety of behavior. On the other hand, complex and seemingly chaotic behavior can give rise to ordered structures, to subtle and beautiful patterns.”

The simple rules of swarm intelligence of bees not only produces the delicious honey, but also pollinates the plants, which we need for our survival. As this unsuspected richness, and variety of behavior cannot be put in reductionist linear equation, so is the potential of Blockchain. The complex system which many outside the system struggles to understand or explain can change the way the current societies exist. To start with, the word mining these days is becoming more linked to Blockchain for millennials. The resources are not derived from the crust of the earth but “mined” on the computers. More and more Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) are coming out, giving option to entrepreneurs, for almost the first time, to create their own currency, which will be validated by people, not by government. The key features of Blockchain technology, like openness, transparency, pseudonymity, and decentralization, can be used across industries. The complex system is creating a new social order.

Bee intelligence became possible after millions of years of evolutionary process, involving complex network and multitude of chemical reactions on first living bacteria, and Blockchains became reality only after exponential development in powers of computers within less than hundred years. Blockchains are relying on the similar self-organizing network with interconnected and interdependent components, which bees use to make honey combs, with the intricacies of network defying imagination. The distributed decision making of bees, and decentralized decision making of Blockchains, point that we might be entering an era where we are learning the principles of leadership from nature. If we let nature be further incharge, and be ready to swirl in its magic well, we might discover new secrets, making the question of whos in-charge entirely redundant.