Turtles, termites, and traffic jams
by Mitchel Resnick · first published 1994
15mentions
9recommended by
12HN commenters
2007–2026first – last mentioned
75% recommend25% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Explores decentralized, emergent behavior through simple agent-based models, showing how complex patterns like traffic jams arise from local rules. Recommended for anyone curious about distributed systems.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"A Bradford book." Includes bibliographical references (p. [157]-163).
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
A good book exploring simple computational models of complex systems with emergent behaviour is Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams by Michael Resnick. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...
on “Ant colony simulator” ↗Also Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams by Mitchel Resnick http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/249411715
on “A giant crawling brain: the world of termites (2018)” ↗…http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Beauty-Nature-Exploratio... - The Computational Beauty of Nature - Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation http://www.amazon.com/Turtles-Termites-Traffic-Jams-Explorat... - Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds - The book that started me in this field And some Google (other search engines are available) search terms: - Fractals - Ants / Termites/ Turtles Behaviour -…
on “God and Design Patterns” ↗I can recommend a great little book about this kind of thing called "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds". Here's the US Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Turtles-Termites-Traffic-Jams-Explorat...
on “The Science Behind Traffic Jams” ↗It seems like people are advocating for centralized solutions to "problems". But after recently reading Mitchel Resnick's book _Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams_, I can't but help wondering what decentralized solutions might look like? Here's a piece by him describing "decentralized" more: http://hci.ucsd.edu/102a/readings/LearningAboutLifeAnnotated... Edit:…
on “China” ↗If you're interested in emergent AI I recommend Mitch Resnick's Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams — https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/turtles-termites-and-traffic-...
on “Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters” ↗> Just yesterday I finished "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams" Oh, that's a great book.
on “Seymour Papert has died” ↗…weak preference of people in group A to live in a majority-similar neighbourhood could, within a few 'moves', cause an almost total polarisation of populations. See Micromatives and Macrobehaviour or Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams.
on “What If Housing Never Bounces Back?” ↗To add to your comment: StarLogo is talked about in the book "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams", which is a great book talking about understanding decentralized phenomenon, and how we learn to understand them. But the language seems to have vastly diverged from what's used in the book, which is…
on “NetLogo – A multi-agent programmable modeling environment” ↗…- (good ideas but not deep enough) The Children's Machine, Rethinking School In The Age of Computers - (uprooted my mind completely about kids) Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas - Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds - (helped me to start thinking about phenoms in a decentralized way, a delightful perspective!)
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗There was also "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams" which uses a parallelized version of logo to explore ideas about decentralized systems and is really excellent: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262680936/turtles-termites-and-...
on “Logo Programming” ↗One of my favorite books is Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262680936/turtles-termites-and-...), basically the thesis of one of his students (and current MIT Media Lab professor) Mitchel Resnick. It's about the educational value of…
on “Logo Programming” ↗Just yesterday I finished "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams" by Resnick who builds heavily upon Papert's work. Mindstorms is on my backlog. I have fond recollections about my first contact with Turtles. It didn't shape me or anything like that, but I'd like…
on “Seymour Papert has died” ↗…called NetLogo. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ It's a decentralized version of logo, where you can control multiple turtles at once. It's useful in simulating distributed systems, such as "turtles, termites, and traffic jams." There's a book by Mitchel Resnick by the same name. http://books.google.com/books?id=K8P1rX8T4kYC&dq=turtles... If you get a chance, run some of the simulations on their demo page. They're available…
on “Forward 40: Where is LOGO? ” ↗The book "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams -- Explorations in massively parallel microworlds" [0] describes StarLogo, which was a massively parallel version of Logo. In it you could create, say, 1000 turtles in the center of the screen, and the…
on “Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)” ↗