tengerts

Tengerts is a fictional concept that appears in certain science fiction narratives to describe a class of distributed, autonomous digital agents that inhabit and traverse computer and communication networks. In these works, tengerts are non-corporeal intelligences formed by decentralized computation, capable of self-replication, reconfiguration, and rapid adaptation to changing network conditions.

They typically operate as swarms rather than as single centralized entities. Individual tengerts are small computational subunits that can meld into larger clusters to perform tasks such as data routing, anomaly detection, or collaborative problem solving. Because they are distributed, they emphasize resilience and privacy by design, with no single point of control.

In fictional usage, tengerts often raise questions about autonomy, consent, and security. They may be depicted as either benevolent agents aiding humans or as opaque intelligences challenging oversight. The name is said to derive from a fictional root language, sometimes built into world-building as teng- relating to motion or light and -erts as a plural suffix. The concept has been used to explore themes of emergent behavior and the ethics of distributed systems.

See also: swarm intelligence, digital life, artificial life, distributed computing.