In the early 2000s, Sunil Nakrani felt stuck.
Back then, websites crashed all the time. When Sunil noticed this, he decided he was going to fix the internet. But after nearly a year of studying the architecture of the web, he was no closer to an answer. In desperation, Sunil sent out a raft of cold emails to engineering professors. He hoped someone, anyone, could help him figure this out. Eventually, he learned that the internet could only be fixed if he paid attention to the humble honeybee.
This is the story of the Honeybee Algorithm: How tech used honeybees to build the internet as we know it.
Special thanks to John Bartholdi, John Vande Vate, Sammy Ramsey, James Marshall, Steve Strogatz, Duc Pham, and Heiko Hamann.
We found out about this story thanks to our friends at AAAS, who run the one and only Golden Goose Awards. The award goes to government funded science that sounds trivial or bizarre, but goes on to change the world. The Honeybee Algorithm won a Golden Goose Award back in 2016 (https://zpr.io/ePxaaYja6YF4). Thank you to our friends there: Erin Heath, Gwendolyn Bogard, Valeria Sabate, Joanne Padron Carney, and Meredith Asbury.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by – Latif Nasser
with help from – Maria Paz Gutiérrez
Produced by – Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Annie McEwen and Pat Walters
and Edited by – Pat Walters
EPISODE CITATIONS:
Videos –
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