Emergence
Still don’t know what it means. Steven Johnson talks about thinking about it not as a top down hierarchy but as a bottom up sort of way of thinking of things. Apparently there are 4 stages of emergence
1. “People working on the problem without realizing they were working on the problem”
2. When whatever you’re studying becomes a field of study in itself
3. “People actually go out understanding the laws that run through these systems and start building things in a conscious awareness of those laws”
4. “Computer networks get to actually start having kind of a mind of their own”
Still don’t know what much of this means, maybe class will help sort this all out.
On another note, I did like the idea of a mash up and it seems like it would be fun to do. Get some friends together and dance to music while trying not to get sued for Copyright infringement.
Is it a little more clear now? Johnson’s approach can seem a little nutty at times, especially in that interview. This is probably because he is coming at it from a very high altitude, ie, he’s taking a very broad view of how the concept of emergence can be useful to us in contemporary life–Juul of course is much more focused on games, and as a result his explanation is much more clear.