DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Emergence

The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software

Steven Johnson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:1st Aug '02

Should be back in stock very soon

Emergence cover

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

ISBN: 9780140287752

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 17mm

Weight: 213g

288 pages