Steven Johnson began his essay on the experiment that was conducted by Deborah Gordon. These two essays have two significantly different topics, but when joined together, they make one conclusion: character and identity can be described as self-organizing systems. Whereas Steven Johnson wrote the essay "The Myth of the Ant Queen" which argues that big systems can self-organize itself and not need a leader. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an essay called "The Power of Context" that argues that character is based on circumstance and context. The town was not set up in a certain pattern but things just seemed to pop up when they were needed.Īltogether I think this was a very unique reading that seems to explain the ordered pandemonium that happens in this world.Character and identity are usually thought of as unified and all-encompassing, however, Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Johnson try to express character and identity as something different. This seems to be what happened in Manchester. It just takes one person and if common interest says that it is working then they see no need in changing how things are set up. If the citizens of the town seem to agree with the location then they will just accept that that is where you go to buy food. Soon more stores seem to spring up because that is where people are going to buy their food. As an example, everyone in a town wants to have somewhere to buy food so someone decides to make a grocery store in a certain part of town. Certain parts of a town just seem to be formed and grow by necessity and common interest. It is quite remarkable how a city can change to suit people’s needs so easily and how it just seems to happen. I just thought it was cool how computer systems have evolved and are now used by us somehow pretty much every day.Īnother part I found interesting was the evolution of the city of Manchester.
#STEVEN JOHNSON THE MYTH OF THE ANT QUEEN SOFTWARE#
It is used in simple programs such as letter recognition software as well as very complex systems such as those used by the military. It is amazing how this system is used so much in this modern world. The results will be random at first because the programs can’t differentiate between things yet but if the process is repeated many times the programs can start to recognize patterns and be incorporated into problem solving applications. Each program has to be taught to recognize whatever they are supposed to do and then report to a higher program that interprets the results of all the smaller programs observations. Every one of those programs actually work together to find out the problem they are trying to solve. I thought that computers were made of many programs that are able to tell exactly what something is but it takes more than that. Computers are actually a lot less exact than most people think. One part that I found very interesting is where he described how computers and similar systems use patterns to solve problems and find out whatever they are made to do. I just do not think he ever relates what he says in the last half of the reading back to the ants but that might just be me. It is kind of odd though that he talks about the ants for about two pages and then never really comes back to them. Right at the beginning of the essay he starts to show his goal by relating the ants in the crammed box to the New York subway system. It was very interesting how Johnson described everything in this world as a kind of ordered chaos. This was a very interesting read like many in this book.