Slashdot Mirror
Emergence
This book covers the theory of emergence, which states that within a system of what seems to be anarchy, there are underlying rules that govern the pattern of behaviour and bring order out of chaos.
This books serves as an introduction to the field of emergence. It is something that is already happening around us, but we usually cannot see. The reason for this is that you need to look at a higher level then the individual organism. Ants can not see the society as a whole that they are members of. Just as we humans may have an understanding of the local community we are in and of ourselves, we need to step outside (or above) the city to understand how it functions. A city, like an ant colony does not have rules from the top as such, but rules that each occupant obeys, and it is these rules that give order to the chaos and make the resultant community behave like an organism as a whole.
I really wanted to like this book. But the level of information within it will make me put in into the light, popular fiction section of my bookshelf. One of the aspects of the book that really wanted me to give a good review is that the author makes a good introduction to the theory behind the comments system of Slashdot, the way people are chosen to rate comments and how good comments filter to the top. As such, I would have liked a review of the editorial process on Kuro5hin as well, since the two systems as fairly similar. In fact, I think the Kuro5hin system is better, because long time readers will see that the stories have moved away from an open source/linux focus to more cultural aspects, thus reflecting the change and growth of the community. But the idea of a Daily Me portal, that serves information that would suit us is explored heavily.
As I read the book though, an uneasiness came upon me, just as I do when reading books on neo-Darwinism. There is no mention of where these rules as such come from except through evolutionary survival or initial chance. If anything, the author implies that we are in a universe that had the initial conditions set, and left running. So we'd evolve or grow into who or what we are.
The idea that a God figure could be there, tweaking the parameters as the model runs, or even setting the initial conditions works against his ideas. This view is however explored in the chapter Control Artist, where the author comments on the development of software models, notably computer games. Games such as SimCity are discussed where the rules are set, but as a player we get to choose what gets built, what gets destroyed. Although here we are playing the Mayor of the City, the notion is the same; we control the macro level and not the micro level. But at the micro level, the software developer who built the game in the first place controls each inhabitant. Nothing really, is left to chance. Given the exact same initial conditions and same set of instructions the computer will create the same environment.
So, like most popular science books currently available it will educate you, entertain you and keep you occupied while reading it or totally bore you. But it is not a book of philosophy to base life on, which thankfully, the author has not tried to provide. It is very well researched, and the author seems on top of current trends and ideas. His writing style jumps around quite a bit, and some of the connections between topics might seem a little far fetched but it is an entertaining read as an introduction to the field of emergence theory.
Pet peeve 1: Notes. The notes section at the end is fairly extensive. But there are no foot notes in the book. The notes are indexed by page and quote. So as a reader you have to constantly check the notes section to see if there is a note or reference for the page you are reading.
Pet peeve 2: There was (for me) a glaring technical error on page 120.
"Ironically, it is precisely this feedback that the Web lacks, because HTML-based links are one-directional. You can point to ten other sites from your home page, but there's no way for those pages to know that you're pointing to them, short of you taking the time to fire off an e-mail to their respective webmasters."You can see who is visiting your site, unless they are using an anonymizer proxy, or other system to hide your headers. The HTTP-REFERER header gives you exactly this information.
You can purchase Emergence at Fatbrain. Want to see your own review here? Read the book review guidelines first, then use the web submissions form.
not that the links actually exist. A link is, in fact, one directional. If no one follows a link, there is no way to know that it exists. Practically, looking at the referrers (or should I say 'referers' to use the official but wrong spelling) of your HTTP requests will tell you pretty much the same thing, but there's a conceptual difference between that and actually having some sort of "reverse-link". Kind of like asking everyone who comes into your store where they heard about you as opposed to hearing first hand from the people making the recommendations.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Somewhat OT, but google.com come's to the rescue (as I'm sure most of the big search engines do) with their "Who's linking to who" searches. To see who's linking to slashdot, for example, try... http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=slashdot.org&bt nG=Seerch
Er, interesting review.
I googled and filtered, an intro to Emergence the notion, and an excerpt from Emergence the book. (In which Slashdot is discussed.)
Oh, and here's a less interesting book review of Emergence from the Village Voice.
Emergence, which the reviewer didn't seem to cover very well, is not "keep moving backwards until you see something ordered." It is a behavior (usually, from what I've read about, in groups) where rules that pertain only to individuals give rise to complex behaviors.
The canonical example of this is flocking, from Flocks, Herds, and Schools by Craig Reynolds. Basically, if all members of a group avoid collisions (with obstacles and each other), match velocity with locally perceived group members, and stay close to local members, a flocking behavior is achieved. There is good evidence as well that this is how flocking is achieved in nature -- ornithologists (bird people.. may have gotten the word wrong:)) have studied Mr. Reynolds' simulations and found them to be indistinguishable from birds.
Another example is ants finding their way to food. They start off randomly travelling, leaving their pheremone trails everywhere. However, once food is found, the pheremone trail to that food is reinforced over and over, causing more and more ants to travel there. Eventually you see a line of ants going straight for the food -- all because of a "wander unless I sense enough pheremones" behavior.
The point of this is that emergence is not necessarily a global phenomenon -- it occurs at all levels.
Since reading and doing an undergrad seminar on Symmetry in Chaos by Marty Golubitsky and Mike Field several years ago, I've been quite interested in this topic.
A more serious alternative to Emergence might be The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
--Zone Dancer
Ilya Prigogine (Nobel Laureate) extended a lot on that matter years ago. I *think* he is one of the first writing about 'emerging properties' of complex systems. Have a look at "Order out of Chaos", or "The End of Certainties", just to name a few... Nevertheless, I think this is one of the most fascinating branch of fundamental research of the last 20 years. This also relates to an article publisher here on Dec 4...
It's hands-down the best post-holocaust SF I have ever read, but it is, incredibly, out of print. If you like this sort of SF, it's worth tracking down a copy.
Unfortunately, the author wrote one more book, "Threshold", and then disappeared entirely. I don't know whether he passed away, ditched writing, or what, but it's a shame.
If you are looking at some additional texts in the area, Dr. John Holland has written two books. (Holland is also a MacArthur award winner, which places him in some fairly good company.)
- Emergence : From Chaos to Order (Helix Books)
- Hidden Order : How Adaptation Builds Complexity
I thought /. reviewed one of the books earlier, but a quick search did not find anything. As I recall, Emergence is the earlier book of the two and is much more technical. Hidden Order is more topical and discusses concepts as opposed to technical details... but it has been a few years since I read either.
Just some info for those who might want another angle on a similar subject.
It seems that the review of Emergence has about as much substance as the book itself, collecting random bits from a larger body of work to prove an almost unrelated point. A reviewer who finds the lack of a god figure in a book about emergent behavior unsettling? That is the whole point of complex adaptive systems you idiot! Rich and varied macro behovior arises from simple rules applied at the micro level in a massively parallel fashion.
That is not to say that Emergence is a good book. It is an adequate book to give to a lay reader who is completely unfamiliar with the subject matter so that they can at least understand the basics of emergent behavior. On the whole the book is about at the same level as Kelley's Out of Control, cute but nothing of consequence. Anyone who is really interested in this subject should start with the following list:
Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (Michael Resnick)
Emergence (John Holland)
Hidden Order (John Holland)
At Home in the Universe (Stuart Kaufman)
A Self-Made Tapestry (John Ball)
Swarm Intelligence (Bonobeau et al.)
The Computational Beauty of Nature (Flake)
Anything (and everything you can find) by Dawkins, E.O Wilson, and Hofsteader along with the Artificial Life series from the Sante Fe Institute (preceedings from the conference series of the same name)
This is an interesting and important subject area which most Slashdot readers would be well-served to examine and explore. Unfortunately such exploration is not served well by either this review or the book being reviewed.
Another book on the topic that came out probably almost 10 years ago is "Emergent Computation", edited by Stephanie Forrest. It's out of print now, but I believe it was also published as a special issue of the Physica D journal. It was a conference proceedings. (I used to work at the Center for Nonlinear Studies and Santa Fe Institute, and Forrest was also around at the time.)
By the way, people interested in this stuff may be interested in checking out the Swarm simulation system, a multi-agent simulation environment. Some of the demos that come with it are the ant/pheromone models and so on, which e.g. Resnick also explored in StarLogo.