Steven Johnson's essay focuses on the idea of "self-organizing systems;" this is a term constantly being used throughout his claim. Self-organizing systems are just systems or patterns that are not influenced by the likelihood of a leader or someone of a higher power. They are social patterns that essentially work on their own and this could occur in all different organisms of life including for humans or even ants. The phrase "self-organizing systems" is, in fact, used to connect the social life of the city of Manchester and even ant colonies. For example, Johnson states, "But the desire to find pacemakers in such systems has always been powerful--in both the group behavior of the social insects, and in the collective human behavior that creates a living city" (Johnson 195). In relation to humans, ants are able to develop a paradigm of social interaction within their colonies that paves the way for a self-organizing system which does not need an authoritarian figure like the "queen" ant. In terms of humans, the city of Manchester, as stated in the essay, astoundingly flourished and became one of the biggest economic capitals of the world just off of a self-organizing system. But with every self-organizing system there are "pacemakers," which essentially maintain the social interaction model exhibited in the system.
In correlation to the text "Project Classroom Makeover" by Cathy Davidson, Johnson's essay indirectly mentions the idea of "crowd-sourced thinking" throughout the essay which is a phrase emphasized in Davidson's text. One can extract the idea of crowd-sourced thinking from the whole experiment with the ants, by alluding to the fact that in order to make a self-organizing system, the ants need to work together. Crowd-sourced thinking is when people or animals put their minds together instead of being separated by expertise; without crowd-sourced thinking, the ants would not be able to form a functional self-organizing system. This can even apply to the Manchester example from Johnson's text, without crowd-sourced thinking, the city would not be able to thrive in the economic world. Hence, crowd-sourced thinking and self-organizing systems go hand in hand with each other.
You say that “self-organizing systems are just systems or patterns that are not influenced by the likelihood of a leader or someone of a higher power”. Yet Lethem believes that everything created is invariably influenced by something prior to its existence, that “all ideas are secondhand” (Lethem 225). So, maybe all self-organizing systems are influenced by something in history. Manchester, for example, could possibly by influenced by the same factors that helped grow many other cities. The same major themes that grow cities, or grow ant colonies, are not unique to each own system. Instead, each system is possibly influenced by each other, both past and present.
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