In large ant societies, complexity is more on the level on the interactions between the individuals. It is certainly not a coincidence that in the largest and most integrated societies, that is in the army ants and termites, the individuals are practically blind. The evolution from the small ant society to large ant society was the result of qualitative changes involving discontinuities. Such type of discontinuities appear in many fields of physics, chemistry and biology. They are associated with bifurcations.
Bifurcations play an important role in our present view of nature.
They lead to multiple possibilities which are associated to probabilities. They destroy the classical deterministic view of nature. We are in a world in construction and the initiative taken by the Club of Rome is a non negligible factor in this construction. The present bifurcation towards a networked society is part of the technological bifurcations which started at the end of the 19th century and went through the whole 20th century. We have therefore already a period of about one century behind us.