Hive mind

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This article is about hive mind as a collective consciousness. For another sense, see hivemind (software).

A hive mind (sometimes spelled hivemind) is a form of collective consciousness strongly exhibiting traits of conformity and groupthink.

The term is also used in science fiction to describe a group of individual organisms that together share a single unified mind, distributing thought and communicating with each other through telepathic means. This is somewhat analogous to how colonies (i.e. hives) of social insects such as ants, bees and termites can seem to behave as if they were a single collective organism.

Hive minds in fiction

"What is a drop, compared to the storm? What is a thought, compared to the mind?" - The Many, System Shock 2

• The Formics in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game Series (Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind)
• The Conjoiners in Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap
• The Nac Mac Feegle in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky
• The Edenists in Peter F. Hamilton's 'The Night's Dawn Trilogy'
• The Tines in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep
• Bruce Sterling's short story "Swarm" in Schismatrix
• The Many in System Shock 2
• The evolving children at the end of Childhood's End
• The Borg in Star Trek
• The Replicators in Stargate SG-1
• The Changelings in Star Trek (while connected in the Great Link)
• The cyborg army of CABAL in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun: Firestorm
• The Rat King in The Ballad of Halo Jones
• The Tyranid race in Warhammer 40,000
• The Zerg race in StarCraft
• The Kharaa (alien species) in Natural Selection
• Gaia and Galaxia in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series
• The gestalt entities in Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human
• The Comprise in Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers
• The Tyr in C.S. Friedman's The Madness Season
• The Partnership Collective™ in Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary
• The Bugs in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers
• The Aparoid in Star Fox Assault
• The Omar in Deus Ex: Invisible War
• In Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon
• The Shivans in Descent: Freespace (hypothesized).
• The Sentinels in The Matrix films.
• The Precogs in "Minority Report" short story by Philip K. Dick (and its film adaptation).
• The Overlords in Dante D'Anthony's "Tales from the Pandoran Age"

See also

• Community
• Collective behavior
• Group entity
• Groupthink
• Herd instinct