Really interesting paper (57 page PDF) that compares how well differently organized agents work together in a shared communication, culture, and world (which "acted as an external memory and transmission medium") or as unconnected individuals. "The experiments support a bounded form of swarm advantage: interaction is most valuable when performance depends on building and maintaining a technological ecology, not when the objective is only to find one record-setting object." Also, "Emergence appeared in organization as well as outcome. No agent was assigned to be an explorer, builder, maintainer, or cultural broker," yet these specializations nonetheless appeared. "The mature society was neither a globally synchronized collective nor a collection of independent agents. It formed persistent, modular technological neighborhoods with a limited set of local hubs and cross-community connectors." Via Ross Dawson.
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