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

by Steven Johnson (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.25

  We have only recently begun to recognize it, yet it exists at every level of our lived experience. It is fast becoming clear that our lives revolve around the powers of emergence. An ant colony behaves with an intelligence no particular ant possesses; a brain is conscious although no particular brain cell is; a city develops districts and neighbourhoods no planner could impose. In each case, complex problems are solved by a profusion of relatively simple elements. Order arrives from the bottom up, not top down. Such systems display emergent behaviour: the movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication. Media, technology and cultural critic Steven Johnson ranges from computer games that simulate living ecology to the guild system of 12th-century Florence; from the initial cell division that marks the very beginning of life to software that lets you listen to the sound of your own brain. The connections between these systems are not the links of poetic metaphor. Everywhere the same laws are obeyed, the same swarm logic is at work. Johnson unearths a secret history of decentralized thinking, looking at those like Adam Smith, Friedrich Engels and Alan Turing who contributed to the study of self-organization long before this became a recognized science. But most of all Johnson pursues emergence in the present, investigating the software that will soon allow artificial emergence to transform our media, bringing sweeping cultural and political change in its wake. This compelling and revelatory book is rich with insights into that future. Emergence allows us to witness the exhilarating arrival and sudden ascendancy of a potent new idea.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $4.18

  Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software is a fascinating look at how self-organising systems are changing the world. Why do people cluster together in neighborhoods? How do internet communities spring up from nowhere? Why is a brain conscious even though no single neuron is? What causes a media frenzy? The answer, as Steven Johnson's groundbreaking book shows, is emergence: change that occurs from the bottom up. When enough individual elements interact and organize themselves, the result is collective intelligence - even though no-one is in charge. It is a phenomenon that exists at every level of experience, and will revolutionize the way we see the world. 'Exhilarating' J.G. Ballard 'A dizzying, dazzling romp through fields as disparate as urban planning, computer-game design, neurology and control theory' Economist 'Mind-expanding ... intelligent, witty and tremendously thought-provoking ... Popular science books interesting enough to read twice don't come along all that often' Guardian 'Not just a fascinating quirk of science: it's the future' The New York Times

• New

  Paperback
  2002

  $12.30

  Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software is a fascinating look at how self-organising systems are changing the world. Why do people cluster together in neighborhoods? How do internet communities spring up from nowhere? Why is a brain conscious even though no single neuron is? What causes a media frenzy? The answer, as Steven Johnson's groundbreaking book shows, is emergence: change that occurs from the bottom up. When enough individual elements interact and organize themselves, the result is collective intelligence - even though no-one is in charge. It is a phenomenon that exists at every level of experience, and will revolutionize the way we see the world. 'Exhilarating' J.G. Ballard 'A dizzying, dazzling romp through fields as disparate as urban planning, computer-game design, neurology and control theory' Economist 'Mind-expanding ... intelligent, witty and tremendously thought-provoking ... Popular science books interesting enough to read twice don't come along all that often' Guardian 'Not just a fascinating quirk of science: it's the future' The New York Times