Norms And Swarms

This paper describes a position for work in progress. We offer a definition of a "swarm" using the management concepts of promises and information rather than the programmed rules commonly used to mimick swarm behaviour. We look for a general and underlying meaning to swarms as a form of organization. Noting that swarms lead to an autonomous reduction of total information of the ensemble of agents, we propose that our definition of swarming suggests criteria for achieving fully decentralized, ad hoc network management without dedicated specialist controllers.