Self Organizing
Networks
A social network is a complex dynamical system: a behavioral part-whole feedback system. In such cases the system can exhibit behavioral patterns that can be surprising, interesting, beautiful, and not reducible to the behavior of the components. We call this emergent behavior. For example, sometimes the behavior of the whole is simply orderless static, noise, garbage, turbulence, chaos. But on closer inspection, chaotic patterns can reveal very complex and beautiful fractal patterns:
Synchronization
Spontaneous synchronization is a mysterious form of emergent behavior in which the behavior of a system's components or agents tend to align with each other over time and the entropy of the system appears to spontaneously decrease. Examples of synchronization include flocking, flashing, ticking, assimilation, and conforming.
In these systems an agent updates itself it "aligns" its behavior with the behavior of a random or influential neighbor or in some cases with the majority of its neighbors. Feedback takes over, as information spreads then echoes back to its origin, releasing another wave of reinforcement, certainty, amplitude. It's positive reinforcement.
Sometimes the way an agent observes its neighbors can be subtle, a mere vibration transmitted through a floor can, over time, cause clocks in a clock shop to start ticking in unison. People walking on a bridge will tend to march in cadence to compensate for the sway of the bridge caused by the cadence, creating a self-reinforcing loop.
Lab
Self Organization
Spontaneous cooperation is an even more mysterious form of emergent behavior. Instead of simply aligning behavior, agents adopt complimentary behaviors, teamwork; and the network appears to exhibit intelligent, goal-oriented behavior. This is called synergy, and it's pretty weird. We normally think of goal-oriented behavior as a product of centralized control: a conductor conducting an orchestra, a CEO leading a company, a sergeant barking orders to his troops. One of the great lessons of social network theory is that goal-oriented behavior can arise from distributed control; think of a bucket brigade; think of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" stabilizing prices in a free market; think of a flock of starlings moving as a single being; think of the Roman Empire; think of democracy; think of the brain.
Slime
More examples of self-organization
There are any examples of self-organizing behavior, bucket brigades, teamwork, fighting an infection, forming governments, trading in a market, etc.