"And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant's thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It's distributed. It's in its legs"
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Kelly’s little turn of phrase smuggles a big heresy into plain English: intelligence isn’t where we’ve been trained to look for it. By framing the finding as “very interesting,” then landing the punchline - “It’s in its legs” - he performs a quiet deflation of our brain-obsessed hierarchy. The sentence structure does the work. First, the familiar setup (thinking equals brain). Then the rug pull: “not in its brain at all.” Then the replacement concept, “distributed,” a term that carries the techno-utopian scent of networks, swarms, and systems. Finally, the image you can’t unsee: legs that “think” by feeling the ground, correcting, adapting, deciding.
The intent is less zoology than worldview. Kelly, as an editor steeped in internet-era metaphors, is arguing for a model of cognition that matches the digital age: robust, redundant, and decentralized. The ant becomes a proxy for everything from supply chains to open-source communities to machine learning - systems that look “smart” not because one command center is brilliant, but because many dumb parts coordinate through feedback.
The subtext is a critique of leadership fantasies. We want a CEO-brain, a genius-founder, a central planner; Kelly points to competence emerging from the periphery. It also nudges a rethink of our own bodies: skill lives in practiced muscles, reflexes, and environment-coupled routines, not just in introspective “brainwork.” The context is classic Kelly: taking a concrete fact from nature and using it to naturalize a politics of networks, where the future belongs to distributed minds.
The intent is less zoology than worldview. Kelly, as an editor steeped in internet-era metaphors, is arguing for a model of cognition that matches the digital age: robust, redundant, and decentralized. The ant becomes a proxy for everything from supply chains to open-source communities to machine learning - systems that look “smart” not because one command center is brilliant, but because many dumb parts coordinate through feedback.
The subtext is a critique of leadership fantasies. We want a CEO-brain, a genius-founder, a central planner; Kelly points to competence emerging from the periphery. It also nudges a rethink of our own bodies: skill lives in practiced muscles, reflexes, and environment-coupled routines, not just in introspective “brainwork.” The context is classic Kelly: taking a concrete fact from nature and using it to naturalize a politics of networks, where the future belongs to distributed minds.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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