December 2008
19 posts
Emergence (steven johnson) p133-4
…all decentralized systems rely extensively on feedback, for both growth and self-regulation “neuronal activity accompanying or initiating an experience persists in the form of reverberating neuronal circuits, which become more strongly defined with repetition. Thus habit and other forms of memory may consist of the establishment of permanent and semipermanent neuronal circuits”...
““the web may never become self-aware in any way that resembles human...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p128-9
““humans are far more skilled at recognising patterns than in thinking...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p127
Emergence (steven johnson) p123
A web2.0 bookmark system like delicious gets better the more it’s used. We each use it for local reasons and without intention we create a macrosystem, and it needs a critical mass (network effects) of users to do this. The system evolves as it can learn by recognising patterns of usage, and offer you associations (collaborative filtering) such as existing tags for this URL, other users who...
Emergence (steven johnson) p114-7
Is the web making us smarter? Just like clusters coalesce in the city sharing knowledge to better exist, they form the city itself from these behaviours. On the web we coalesce the same way, networking and sharing for our self interest and as a result of participation and conversation we create macro systems like youtube -also people are taking part for their own reasons, but from this pool of...
“the specialisation of the city makes it smarter, more useful for its...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p109, 112
“this knack for capturing information, and for bringing related pockets of...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p107-8
Emergence (steven johnson) p103-4
LEARNING AND PATTERN RECOGNITION “…learning is not always contingent on consciousness…the body learns without consciousness, and so do cities, because learning is not just about being aware of information; it’s about storing information and knowing where to find it. It’s about being able to recognise and respond to changing patterns…it’s about altering a...
Emergence (steven johnson) p97-99
VOLITION, free will, self consciousness is the defining characteristic between ants (colonies) and people (cities) “…the intelligence of the colony actually relies on the stupidity of its component parts: an ant that suddenly started to make conscious decisions about, say, the number of ants on midden duty (clean-up) would be disastrous for the overall group…this scenario doesnt...
““sidewalks (footpaths) work because they permit local interactions to...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p96-7
““one group of cells may be the beginning of an arm…each cell has...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p85-6
““…while the overall colony evolves and adapts over fifteen years,...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p81-5
Emergence (steven johnson) p77-9
5 principles of self organising, emergence and adaptive from local knowledge (swarm logic) 1. MORE IS DIFFERENT - critical mass (need big numbers) 2. IGNORANCE IS USEFUL -simple connected elements, leading to intelligent macro behaviour -you dont want a neuron in your brain to become sentient 3. ENCOURAGE RANDOM ENCOUNTERS -arbitrary encounters allow individuals to gauge and alter the...
“local feedback may well prove to be the secret to the ant world’s...”
– Emergence (steven johnson) p77
““…ant information-processing relies on the chemical compounds of...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p75-6
“take the relationship between foraging and colony size. Harvester ant colonies...”
– Emergence (steven johnson) p74-5
““their knack for engineering and social coordination can be downright...”
– Emergence (Steven Johnson) p74
“to watch darwinian evolution in action, all you need are objects that are...”
– Emergence (steven johnson) p60
Emergence (steven johnson) p58
Living things are based on a safe fail premise called natural selection-self organisation in design. DNA pool where variations and behaviours are evaluated and successful ones live on…self organising and adapting. “run through enough cycles, you have a recipe for engineering masterworks like the human eye-without a bona fide engineer in sight” This was done in computer...