This article, drawing on Hofstadter's description of the anthill as a self-organizing system, describes similar behaviour involving connected wireless devices. The article describes the physical conditions characteristic of such systems: a connection between small devices that is that is always on. But this is only a part (and not even the interesting part) of such a story. A pile of sand is a connected assembly of small parts, but its behaviour is no more interesting than, well, a pile of sand. What makes a connected network of small entities interesting is what these entities want to do. Grains of sand want to do nothing more interesting than obey the laws of gravity. Ants want to do somewhat more interesting things, like eat and procreate. But humans, even humans armed with dumb terminals, want to vastly more interesting things. The network that results, therefore, no more resembles an anthill than an anthill resembles a pile of sand. And when we try to elucidate this difference, the study of networks gets very interesting.
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