Everything Flows Essay Research Paper Everything flows

Everything Flows Essay Research Paper Everything flows

Everything Flows Essay, Research Paper

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Everything flows Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software Steven Johnson 288pp, Penguin Harvester emmets aren & # 8217 ; t peculiarly bright. Yet settlements of these animals gather nutrient, fight off enemies, sedimentation trash and fallen companions in orderly tonss outside their nests, and by and large draw off some of the most astonishing efforts of technology in the carnal land. How do settlements accomplish all this when the encephalons of their members are so limited? It is alluring to believe that the queen understands the maestro program and in some manner coordinates her minions, but in world she & # 8217 ; s merely every bit thick as they are. No 1, it seems, is drawing the settlement & # 8217 ; s strings, so how does it pull off to work as a whole? The reply may lie in self-organization, a phenomenon explored by Steven Johnson in his mind-expanding Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. In its most basic signifier, a self-organising system comprises many simple elements whose single behavior are determined by local conditions. A worker emmet may falter across a co-worker & # 8217 ; s pheromone trail pass oning the message & # 8220 ; out scrounging & # 8221 ; . If such trails are dense on the land, the meeting emmet may halt roll uping nutrient and get down taking out the rubbish alternatively. Alternatively, if the frequence of & # 8220 ; out scrounging & # 8221 ; messages is low, the emmet may react by striking out along a trail that says, by odor, & # 8220 ; nutrient over here & # 8221 ; , and get down roll uping once more. Provided persons stick to their several regulations, apparently intelligent behavior by the settlement as a whole can emerge without any ant being the wiser. This type of self-organization is now recognised in many systems composed of legion elements or faculties capable of executing comparatively simple behaviors in response to local stimulation. & # 8220 ; Bottom-up & # 8221 ; forces likely play a important function in determining the nature of metropoliss, taking to the creative activity of suburbs, slums, concern Centres and other unplanned demographic bunchs. No one decreed that Savile Row should house London & # 8217 ; s finest seamsters, for illustration ; the character of the street emerged as a consequence of determinations taken by single concerns about such things as profile, supply lines and client bases. Similarly, the silk weavers of Florence began to congregate unbidden on the Por Santa Maria in the eleventh century and are still providing their trade at that place today, despite the coming and traveling of wars, pestilences, fires and monolithic societal turbulences.

Cities seem to have emergent lives of their own, governed by the usually unwitting actions of their inhabitants over many generations. We are the ants, in other words, and cities are our colonies. Warming to his metropolitan theme, Johnson then asks a seemingly ludicrous question: can cities learn? Learning is usually associated with conscious beings, but then an immune system “learns” throughout its owner’s lifetime, adapting and manufacturing antibodies to counter the threat of invading pathogens. This type of learning seems to revolve around information-storage and a certain responsiveness to change, so there may indeed be a sense – albeit rather a narrow one – in which cities too can be said to learn. If you think this is esoteric stuff, read on. “If cities can generate emergent intelligence, a macro-behavior spawned by a million micromotives,” Johnson muses, “what higher-level form is currently taking shape among the routers and fiber-optic lines of the internet?” Might the world wide web become a “global brain”? Will emergent intelligence, or even self-awareness, arise unbidden in cyberspace? Controlling the net is hard enough at present, but what if it starts getting ideas of its own? If, like me, you feel an overwhelming urge to head for the nearest unplugged island when cybergeeks start banging on about our technological future, this is an occasion to resist. Johnson’s speculations about life on the internet, machine intelligence, computer programs that evolve on their own, feedback loops in modern media networks and so on are intelligent, witty and tremendously thought-provoking. And his conclusions will probably surprise you. Emergence is a fascinating book, full of surprises and insights, and written in an easy, engaging style. However, you may have to read it more than once to appreciate its subtleties. The significance of emergent behaviour is made admirably clear in the case of insects, slime moulds and even cities, but grasping its relevance to the Gennifer Flowers affair and the operation of internet chatrooms is a bit more challenging. The connections are there, but Johnson is rather sparing with the signposts. He also tends to place them less than helpfully towards the end of chapters, requiring the reader, finally enlightened, to go back and reconsider all the earlier spadework. Still, popular-science books interesting enough to read twice don’t come along all that often. · Chris Lavers is the author of Why Elephants Have Big Ears (Phoenix).



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