It was a casualty of feedback.” And the feedback was so strong that the original repressors of the story found themselves airing the story they had once thought non news worthy. Steven Johnson writes in Emergence “In the hierarchical system of old, the network heads could willfully suppress a story if they thought it was best for the American people not to know, but that privilege died with Gennifer Flowers, and not be because of lower standards or sweeps week. (Since we all read the book I’m not going to really go into details about the case.) The important idea is that, the heads of the system thought her story was not news worthy and choose to blow it off and just move on, but a local news station aired it and the story became news. Her story shifted the top down system of new broadcasting to a bottom up system. Gennifer Flowers, to be honest before reading this book I had never heard of her, but she holds a great deal of responsibility in why the media of my era is the way it is. The parts change the system instead of the system changing the parts. They individually make changes that collectively change the system as a whole. The ant’s within the system have no real way of communicating but yet somehow keep their huge colony runs smoothly. An ant colony is a huge system that runs from the bottom up. One of our class discussions revolved around this idea that emergence is the idea of a system forming from the bottom up. But though reading Emergence I am definitely starting to see and somewhat understand the connections. To be honest when I think of city structure my first thought is not ant colonies or the media. It’s amazing to me that Steven Johnson has found one word that seems to connect a number of ideas. A book like Emergence is definitely one of those books that needs group discussing. I would like to say that this book has helped me to understand but at some points I find myself with more questions than definite answers. The idea of emergence is one that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around. If cities had a mind of its own then life on earth would be chaotic. Yes it can evolve through many many years but it is only possible when there are humans involve to initiate these changes or if some kind of big natural event occurs. As for the discussion we had in class, I personally think a city can’t learn by it self. On the contrary, their actions were all pre-wired and individualized tasks that needed to be done were as natural as breathing for us. I found it interesting that these ants got no instructions from some higher authority ant to perform certain tasks. The myth about the Queen Ant and how their colony function was what caught my attention. Some parts do remain as the slums and other parts do transform into upscale living. I did not really find that portion of the book really interesting but he did point of some facts that are very true when looking at a city. The descriptions in the city section were helpful but could be overkill in the details department. I did felt that in certain parts of this book, things got dragged out longer than they should have been. It doesn’t mean I will completely change my ideas, but at least I have a better understanding of why he sees things the way he does. But the book by Steven Johnson led me to look at things from a different angle. I figured things behave the way they do because it just does, nothing more to it. Is will we eventually be limited in social evolution as a result ofīefore this class and reading the first half of the book, I have never thought of looking beyond the obvious in certain aspects of life. The emergence of macro behavior in cities however, it appears that weĪre no longer ruled by biological evolution. I personally believe that we are still evolving socially, as shown by The way we do? In answering this, both social and biological evolution
Goal? Or have we instead stuck in a rut where we are content to exist Assuming that there is a goal to achieve, are weĪs a whole continuing to develop and evolve to better achieve this Order to make this assertion, there needs to be a predefined goal for Peak in the fitness landscape”, as described by Johnson. I couldn’t help thinking if perhaps we humans are trapped in a “false “predators” into the system in order to weed out programs that took Make the end result as efficient as possible, Hillis had to introduce With time to eventually be efficient at sorting numbers.
The myth of the ant queen by steven johnson software#
Hillis’ attempt at writing emergent software that can improve itself I found Johnson’s examples and insight of emergent software to be very