John Robb says that if you want to understand modern terrorists, you should start by studying ants:

Stigmergy is a term used in biology (from the work of french biologist Pierre-Paul Grasse) to describe environmental mechanisms for coordinating the work of independent actors (for example, ants use pheromones to create trails and people use weblog links to establish information paths, for others to follow). The term is derived from the greek words stigma (“sign”) and ergon (“to act”). Stigmergy can be used as a mechanism to understand underlying patterns in swarming activity. As such, it can be applied to the understanding of the swarming attacks of diverse global guerrilla groups.

I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before — but it does make sense that a terrorist network is, in some ways, a “community of purpose” of the type I’ve been writing about here, just taken to a whole new level…