If you like to explore further possibilities of using the swarm approach, have a look at the 'classical' paper of Hoffenmeyer: Swarm Semiotics on: http://www.molbio.ku.dk/MolBioPages/abk/PersonalPages/Jesper/Swarm.html

and the paper of another well-known semiotician Umiker-Sebeok: The semiotic swarm of cyberspace: Cybergluttony and Internet addiction in the global village: http://www.slis.indiana.edu/umikerse/papers/cgsec1.html

Those who are interested in modelling swarm behavior, please, have a look at: http://www.catachan.demon.co.uk/Alife/swarm.html The parameters you can play with in the above model are: degree of separation, alignment, cohesion, and avoidance between the individuals.

Last year, Santa-Fe institute issued an interesting book "Swarm Intelligence": http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0195131592.html

Tutorial Introduction to Swarm Dynamics (aspects of social modelling), you can find at: http://www.swarm.org/csss-tutorial/titlefoil.html

Another interesting site is http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~good/webnotes.html