Emergence (Steve Johnson) The connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software

As Steve Johnson says, it’s amazing how ants have been on the planet since the beginning of time due of their complex organization, hence the reason you need to understand their organization and complexity of their systems, Steve Johnson compares metaphorically community ant, with the DNA , cells and cities. Hence the main theme, what is emergency? , What is a complex system? and how they work from a micro scale like cells , ants to a macro scale like cities . In the case of ants, their system is completely based on the information or local system, which is really the strongest point of the swarm logics, such information or events bring together local mass or a complex organizational system, such as ants, they do not really know how big the colony is or situations that occurs far away from them, they simply rely on the information they have on their surroundings, think and act locally but these actions together cause a larger scale global behavior. If you want to build a complex system from the ground levels, are needed to understand 5 important things. More is different – in this case is simple compared to the ants , the fewer individuals are the lower the ability to make a job , however the more individuals works will take place more effectively this work. Ignorance is useful – is something funny but it’s real, it’s easier to build a complex system based on simple elements, rather than creating complex systems with complex elements, the clearest example is the computer, it works with a binary system of ones and zeros , by means of these can create a surprising interface. Encourage random encounters – it means that occurs arbitrary events that are not planned, these events in a large scale cause different situations providing much experience, as in the case of ants when encountering other external ant. Look For patterns in the signs – as the name describes, the fact set and follow the patterns or signs that leaves an individual causes a change of information globally. Pay attention to your neighbors – this is the most important principle in the swarm logic, observe and share the information with your neighbors , without neighboring is like a swarm without logic, something that we must study and apply in large cities . This is where everything is related, for example the human body, composed of millions of cells are organized to become more complex structure through the exchange of information with their surroundings and neighbors. Our body cells work the same way for a complex system, and here’s where the big cities take place, the changing information is on the sidewalks so for this author is the main and most important tool in the cities. Sidewalks allow relatively high bandwidth communication between total strangers, and they mix large numbers of individuals in random configuration. They provide the right number of local interactions; they are the gap junctions of the city life. There are a lot of things that we can learn about this complex organization, but we can’t compare this system like ants or cells, because we are more intelligent than this organism so the social pattern that we form tend to be substantially more complex than those of the ants for example. Like always the emphasis on free will only matters on the scale of the individual human life, so in the end I think that emergence is the ability to store and retrieve information, to recognize and respond to patterns in human behavior. ————————————————————————————————————————— After read this lecture I think that my conception of complex systems changes, because now I can really gauge the size and scale of those systems. Despite the fact that we can´t compare for example between ants and humans, we can learn a lots of things from these micro and macro systems because in the end, for me are perfect systems because through communication and self- organization the transcendence is very impressive, and we could implement this in different ways, since personal level until higher like cities, countries and continents. Like he mentions as well, learn and share information among neighbors to achieve a significant change on a much larger scale. Maybe my project research will be about how to make a design of a building, respecting the surroundings, connecting the interior with the exterior in order to obtain mutual benefits, like Toyo Ito makes with the surroundings in that case the nature and environment.