Ant colonies and grassroots Wi-Fi: W. David Stephenson talks about the emergent behavior of grassroots Wi-Fi networks as they expand in size and utility. Emergent behavior is a powerful concept because it states that complexity without centralized organization can result in order not chaos, sophistication instead of a breakdown. Sort of the opposite of the rules of capitalism as practiced in the United States and elsewhere. I see emergent behavior all the time at isbn.nu, a book price comparison service I run. The several programs, including CGI scripts, daemons, and cron jobs have an interesting dance that I sometimes seem to have little involvement with. Like watching locusts eat a corn field, or dragonflies mate.

6:01:58 PM    comment   

MIT Stanford Venture Lab: the Wild West of Wi-Fi: Tues., Oct 15., listen to how Vernier Networking (only coincidentally a sponsor currently of this site) plans to chart a successful route to profitability by selling wireless LAN management hardware that can pull together the many threads of operations. A panels discusses the issues after the CEO presents.

5:53:13 PM    comment