Simple automata summing up to complex system

All system is made of simpler parts.  The vast spectrum of how simplistic individuals can be put together to create complex system is what makes a network amazing.  Ant colony is such an example.

What is fascinating is that individually ant has very limited memory and cognitive ability to process information.  But as a whole it acts as a living organism, as if it has consciousness of its own.  An ant starts out searching for food.  It takes random steps until it can locate some food.  Once finding them, it goes back to signal other ants to follow the path to carry the food.

 Deborah Gordon and Balaji Prabhakar found that ants use TCP-like protocol
to deploy their colony of ants to maximize their chance of fetching food

Why Facebook Gets Bad Reputation For User Data Privacy

If you are a long time Facebook user, you'll remember Facebook's humble beginning as college student network. Facebook used to operate around the networks that you belong to. Facebook user could choose school network, work network, even regional network to share private information.

To most of you all these network-centric sharing would be distant memory. And so it was with me. I have long forgotten this network-centric sharing past of Facebook, and even the fact that I entered my network as FaceTime Communications (Actiance used to be known as FaceTime Communications).

Your Friends Are More Likely To Have More Friends Than You Do

Have you ever wondered if your friends might be more popular than you are? Well, statistically it has some merits. On average, your friends will have more friends than you do. Scott L. Feld, Professor of Sociology at Purdue University, wrote about this counter-intuitive fact back in 1991.