Metamarks as the Hidden Forces Synchronizing Collective Intelligence
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This systematic literature review of 93 multilingual papers examines human stigmergy across disciplines. Found in Wikipedia, urban trails, and healthcare teams, metamarks (traces signaling transformations) create persistent communication channels enabling the emergence of collective behavior and complex coordination. Evidence reveals stigmergy's scalability from local interactions to global systems, bridging biological principles with digital governance and smart city applications. While demonstrating robust decentralized coordination across domains, the literature exposes tensions between narrow physical definitions and broader interpretations encompassing symbolic metamarks in human systems.
