"The Myth of the Aunt Queen" (9/13)

Emergence

In the essay "The Myth of the Ant Queen" by Steven Johnson, I noticed the idea of emergence several times throughout. Johnson first mentions emergence in reference to Deborah Gordon, a student at Stanford. He states that she is "a particular kind of emergent, self organizing system" (Johnson 194) Students together are part of a self-organizing system. Each student has particular roles, tasks, goals, and purposes. All together a society emerges within the school setting. Next, he uses the word to discuss ant colonies and their decentralized behavior. Contrary to popular belief, ant colonies have no authority system and the ant queen does nothing more than have all of the ant offspring. Order and patterns emerge from ant colonies because they collectively function together. Each ant has a job and they all come together to form a cohesive, functioning population. emergent intelligence is vital in self-organizing systems, like ant colonies. Johnson goes on to discuss human cities and "the mix of order and anarchy" (Johnson 198) Emergent behavior suggests that things will just happen because of the way the community was set up. For example, Manchester is a highly segregated city simply because that is how the city was developed. There was no plan. As Johnson says on page 199, "larger patterns can emerge out of uncoordinated local actions". This idea suggests that one act by an individual can set the road for a pattern to emerge even though there was no plan of this pattern to develop.

Emergence can also be applied to the essay from last week. I immediately remembered the iPod experiment and all that emerged from it. There was no plan for the iPod experiment, Duke let the students take it in the directions they wanted. Additionally, Davidson discussed the past of the education system which is also largely linked to emergence. The education system emerged as an efficient way to churn out more factory workers. That is why the early education system was methodical and almost assembly line like. Schools were meant to prepare the youth to work so the education system emerged into a very rigid curriculum with little room for creativity. The two texts contain similar ideas about the importance of collaboration and collective learning. Johnson focuses more on organisms in society and the world. He goes into the idea that individuals flock to where they fit in and feel comfortable.