Prof. Neil Leach
Fall 2016
Emergence Chapters summary
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, by Steven Johnson
The word emergence is defined as a system that has many mechanism, but none of the mechanism is called to be the leader of that system. The system works as a whole; every constituent knows their role to fulfil their task without any interruptions. Within the system, all entities follow basic rules and behave to achieve their goal in the same direction.
In the book, Steven Johnson describes the word emergence as an evolution that impacts our society every day. From way we behave, communicate, and resolve our daily problems, one factor can be similar comparing to the ant’s colony is by working …show more content…
As far as the evolution goes, we will still have the natural gift for building theories of other minds. This is about our cells when observing others our intelligence will connect us to our surrounding and gather internal information relying on our brains being wired in a specific way that creates an emergence system. The second method is the rise of city developments. The expansion of cities has been influenced by the connection of immigrants, the surplus of foods with the creation of so- called urbanization occurs- concentration of people in cities, thus creates problems for us as human to deal with. With the capacity of our intelligence, we create patterns to solve the problems. The actual construction of the patterns can be different regular or irregular for such major cities like Florence and New York City. As Steven Johnson mentions in the book, Florence is an establishment based on one solid urban policy and regulation by flowing the rules by Jane Jacobs that were settled half of century ago shorter blocks, livelier sidewalks, mixed-used zoning, and pedestrian-based transportation. Despite the digital revolution, Florence today adapts the tradition of self-organizing. Unlike, New York City which is seen as a chaotic pattern- an element of defense with the construction of underground tunnels makes it a complex system that rivals us today. Since many years ago engineers as mind readers have built more complicated systems to target …show more content…
Today, there lot of improvements made to the game itself due to users’ feedback. As a result, programmers are taking steps to control complexity of games by using the emergent system. As we accustom to getting news and entertainment from television, mind reading is also applied in this method of broadcasting. As technology evolves, engineers continue to work to make television a better content to encounter complexity. Few years back, viewers were relying on their cable providers to watch their favorite Tv shows because digital recorders (TiVo) were not capable of recording favorite Tv shows. With viewers’ high demand, programmers are able to make TiVo smarter to satisfy their needs. Nowadays, viewers do not rely anymore on their cable providers for their favorite tv shows. With the intelligence of TiVo, they are able to record their favorite shows and watch it at any time they want without interruption. In that case, digital recorders are capable to read people minds because they know what favorite tv shows people want and when to watch them. We can say that we have come far to understand the behavior of others to create a system for our entertainment and to appreciate more the emergent system that helps us to organize