Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software

At times hilariously outdated (read the author marvel at digital ants walking across a screen as opposed to today’s ChatGPT and deep fakes) yet always applicable to today’s world. It helps the reader form an intuitive understanding of how the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. (Eg anthills or slime molds behaving as discrete organisms that appear to reason and plan.) Anyone interested in any processes or abstractions (computational, biological, anthropological) would enjoy this book.

My Rating

★★★★☆

Author

Steven Johnson

Published

2002

Publisher

Scribner

Length

288 pages