Bottoms-Up!

The book Emergence, by Steven Johnson, is the latest reading that we have embarked on. For starters, I’d like to say that this is my favorite and the most interesting read we have had this semester, as it makes you think about very complex and deep issues without confusing you too much. Through the introduction and first chapter we have read, the major theme is simply introducing the idea of emergence and giving examples of it. Emergence is “the movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication” (18) according to the book.

The book goes over some interesting emergent examples, which really help to show the ideas involved. The first one covered is the slime mold example, in which single-celled organisms act together at times and separately at other times. The question though is how do the cells know when to act in concert? The most logical idea would be that there are “pacemaker cells”, or some sort of hierarchy where certain cells that are in charge “tell” the other cells what to do. However, it turns out that “slime mold aggregation is now recognized as a classic case study in bottom-up behavior” (16). Basically, there aren’t any cells in charge, there are a lot of bottom-level activities that go on which somehow create a more complex activity. The ant colony is another given example, in which the colony has no leader but can still develop complex structures of organization through a bottom-up system. It is a non-intuitive way to build complex systems; by having basic rules act in a way that somehow build into the complex system.

In comparison to today’s world, it can be really difficult to understand how this could happen. Our governments, schools, churches, organizations, and even families are based upon authority figures telling lower-level people what to do, and they often tell other people what to do, and so forth down the line. This type of system is a top-down one, completely the opposite of the way slime mold aggregates. The thing that I find interesting is that the bottom-up systems work so well in some types of situations, like the slime mold or ants, but I seriously don’t think humans can do it. Maybe it’s our human nature, but when thinking of an example, I seemed to link bottom-up behavior to that of communism. It seems like a fantastic idea, but when humans try it, there is a sense of everyone not wanting to work together. Undoubtedly there is always someone that wants more than everyone else or doesn’t hold up his or her end of the bargain, resulting in the failing of the system. Apparently, this doesn’t seem to exist in ant colonies or slime mold cells, or at least it does not affect them so much. I really do not have any sort of explanation for this, and I don’t think that just learning from their systems can change human nature, but it sure would be nice if we could.

When reading, I became a little confused about other ways in which emergent theory and the mathematics involved are part of our daily lives now. It is stated that “in recent years our day-to-day life has become overrun with artificial intelligence” (21), and there are “new forms of emergent software being developed today” (22). I seem to be drawing a blank when trying to think up examples of emergent software using bottom-up systems explicitly. If anyone has an example of this that they could share, it might help me understand better how emergence is so prominent in our daily lives.