hive mind

noun

variants or less commonly hivemind

ˈhīv-ˌmīnd 

1

: the collective mental activity expressed in the complex, coordinated behavior of a colony of social insects (such as bees or ants) regarded as comparable to a single mind controlling the behavior of an individual organism

The tiny bees in a hive are more or less unaware of their colony, but their collective hive mind transcends their small bee minds.

—Sven Birkerts and Kevin Kelly

2

: the collective thoughts, ideas, and opinions of a group of people (such as Internet users) regarded as functioning together as a single mind

… Mindy Kaling asks her Twitter followers for the best dinner spots in cities she's visiting. Generally, people trust that feedback from the hive mind is correct and well-informed.

—Sarah Z. Wexler

While the building was being renovated, Jackson and his wife turned the design of the studio kitchen over to the hive mind of the staff.

—Mark Healy

… It's just not rational to believe that people are able to read, let alone understand, all the privacy policies …. Instead, users now rely on the Internet hivemind to know if a particularly egregious privacy change is afoot.

—Andrea Peterson

Did you know?

Sometimes a biological term crosses over into everyday language with a similar, but less specific meaning. Take drone, a word for a stingless male bee: it dates back all the way to Old English and is also used today for (among other things) someone tasked with boring, repetitive work. More recently, hive mind has similarly flown beyond the apiary; what was first used to talk about the ways that colonies of social insects, like bees and ants, behave as a coordinated unit has come to be applied also to the collective thoughts, ideas, and opinions of a group of people seeming to function as a single entity. It’s not uncommon nowadays to see someone appeal to the hive mind of a social media website for relationship advice or dining recommendations, for example, or refer to a celebrity’s fanbase (like Queen Bey’s “Beyhive”) acting together to share the latest buzz about their favorite star.

Examples of hive mind in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Plenty of the end-of-year lists flooding your algorithm, including others of ours, are group-thinks, and the collective wisdom of the hive mind has obvious value. —Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 7 Dec. 2024

Our hive minds exist in the real world, attached to real bodies. —Susanne Paola Antonetta, CNN, 11 Oct. 2024

In the earliest and most predictable part of the show, the half-dozen Thoughts are a chorus line of nags operating from a hive mind of self-hostility. —Chris Willman, Variety, 28 June 2024

The Present Twitter turns to the hive mind for moderation via its Birdwatch program The platform experiments with letting users decide what content needs flagging. —Big Think, 24 June 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1958, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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