Emergence

Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software is a fascinating look at how self-organising systems are changing the world.Why do people cluster together in neighborhoods? How do internet communities spring up from nowhere? Why is a brain conscious even though no single neuron is? What causes a media frenzy?The answer, as Steven Johnson's groundbreaking book shows, is emergence: change that occurs from the bottom up. When enough individual elements interact and organize themselves, the result is collective intelligence - even though no-one is in charge. It is a phenomenon that exists at every level of experience, and will revolutionize the way we see the world.'Exhilarating' J.G. Ballard'A dizzying, dazzling romp through fields as disparate as urban planning, computer-game design, neurology and control theory' Economist'Mind-expanding ... intelligent, witty and tremendously thought-provoking ... Popular science books interesting enough to read twice don't come along all that often' Guardian'Not just a fascinating quirk of science: it's the future' The New York Times