Name: Emergence
ISBN: 9780684868769

Emergence

"Emergence is what happens when an interconnected system of relatively simple elements self-organizes to form more intelligent, more adaptive higher-level behavior. It's a bottom-up model, rather than being engineered by a general or a master planner; emergence begins at the ground level. Systems that at first glance seem vastly different - ant colonies, human brains, cities, immune systems - all turn out to follow the rules of emergence. In each of these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behavior that lies a scale above them: ants create colonies, urbanites create neighborhoods. In the tradition of Being Digital and The Tipping Point, Steven Johnson takes readers on an eye-opening intellectual journey from the discovery of emergence to its applications."--BOOK JACKET.

What Hacker News says

cratermoonFeb 2022

> Hierarchies seem like a natural fit for the human mind

I'd argue they only seem that way because we've been raised and taught to use them but haven't been taught sufficiently to think about other ways to organize knowledge.

> They're not a natural fit for real world data

In "A City is not a Tree"[1], Christopher Alexander discusses the semilattice in relation to city planning and human societies. Clay Shirky has previously noted[2] that categories and ontologies are too brittle to serve human thinking.

As an example of an ongoing attempt to create a hierarchical ontology that isn't helpful, look at any list of music genres. Also note that social networks are not organized hierarchically – humans have the ability to handle interconnected structures just fine.

This also relates to why many people don't understand or can't quite relate to true distributed peer-to-peer computing or systems where there is no central controller or fail to grasp emergent behavior. But nature is fine with completely decentralized systems: see, for example, foraging ants. See, for example, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson

1. https://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/i103su12/files/2011/07/19... 2. https://oc.ac.ge/file.php/16/_1_Shirky_2005_Ontology_is_Over...

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SavantIdiotAug 2021

I was surprised to read this entire article without seeing the word "emergent". If you found this article interesting, there's a great book on this topic that compares ants, slime molds, brains and cities: how simple organisms create seemingly intelligent behavior. It's like G.E.B. in how it ties together disparate domains, but not as brutal.

Emergence The Connected Lives Of Ants Brains Cities & Software by Steven Johnson

https://www.powells.com/book/emergence-the-connected-lives-o...

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staycoolboyMay 2020

Obligatory thesis that cracks this open:

"Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software"

An utterly phenomenal book:

https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Connected-Brains-Cities-Sof...

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F_J_HJul 2019

I had not heard of "emergent architecture" until you implied you hated it, and so I thought I would Google it.

I have no idea what emergent architecture is in the agile context, but the idea of emergence is fascinating to me, and has been ever since I read "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" by Steven Johnson.

We see the idea of emergent design everywhere in nature and society. I'm not suggesting everything can be built and designed "emergently", but certainly some things can be. See the book (and concept of) "the cathedral and the bazaar". The idea of something useful coming into existence without central planning is an enticing one, and so I can see the draw.

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mindcrimeOct 2015

I'm sure there are many, but a few that jump to mind, in no particular order, and spanning both fiction and non-fiction:

The Selfish Gene - Dawkins

A New Kind of Science - Wolfram

The Singularity is Near - Kurzweil

Gödel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter

Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies - Hofstadter

Atlas Shrugged - Rand

The Fountainhead - Rand

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell

The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

Time Reborn - Lee Smolin

Ambient Findability - Peter Morville

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - Steven Johnson

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age - Duncan Watts

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life - Albert-laszlo Barabasi

Artificial Life - Steven Levy

The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank

The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman

not a book, but the various writings of Douglas Engelbart - http://www.dougengelbart.org/library/library.html

Glasshouse - Charles Stross

Permutation City - Greg Egan

Neuromancer - William Gibson

The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner

The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky

The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society - Eric Beinhocker

The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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patricklynchApr 2011

Check out the book 'Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software' (Steven Johnson) for more awesome discussion of ant behavior, among other things.

Some highlights:

* Ants will sacrifice themselves as 'living bridges' to help most of their comrades pass an obstacle.

* Individual workers choose their role by keeping a running tally of what the other workers they walk past are doing.

* Any single ant follows a pretty limited instruction set, but the colony--taken as a whole--exhibits traits comparable to the intelligence of a small mammal.

* Ants in a habitat manage to stack the corpses of dead ants as far as possible from the queen, the nursery, any food sources, and paths between them. So in any ant habitat, you wind up with a row of dead ants arranged neatly in some corner.

There's more, both ant-related and not, but the general point I'm trying to get at is that the book is amazing.

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