I’ve been savoring Steven Johnson’s Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software for some time now. It’s a fluid look at the ideas behind bottom up organization and self organizing systems. Our lives are filled with self organizing systems and yet we are blind to most, if not all, of them.
As a developer of automated systems I find the insights gained from self organizing ant colonies or human cell biology key to my better understanding of the applications I develop. As a person I am thoroughly enjoying a fascinating look into how our world really works.
Rating: Read it slowly, thoughtfully