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.

First sentence: It's early fall in Palo Alto, and Deborah Gordon and I are sitting in her office in Stanford's Gilbert Biological Sciences building, where she spends three-quarters of the year studying behavioral ecology.

Year

2001

Language

English

Publisher

Scribner

Editions

6

Reader rating

4.2 / 5 (5)

Pages

288

ISBN

9780684868752

Data source: Wikidata