Johnson Reading Assignment

A term in Johnson's text that stood out to me was "organized complexity". Throughout the text the author discusses different complex systems that at first seem chaotic and disorganized but later have a strange natural order to them regardless of how random it may seem. For example when the author discusses the ant colony at first the farm seems like a randomly organized colony that has no order, but after taking a closer look its clear that the placement of each room in the colony, such as the queens room, is designed with a specific purpose in mind. However, as the author explains these insects have no guidance what so ever they all function on there own will and act as they seem fit, yet somehow they have a natural order. Other topics that the author discuss such as the growth of Manchester fits the same mold of growing from what seems like absolute chaos into a large scale system of different working parts. "Organized complexity" ultimately comes down to the idea of numerous individual parts growing separately and developing on their own, and growing into a system that helps all groups involved grow as a whole.

The idea of "organized complexity" helps create a shared horizon between Johnson's and Davidson's texts. In the iPod experiment many different students were creating different apps to serve their own need and help themselves grow individually, but each app that was created is shared with everyone else who owns an iPod. Even though at first every person is creating an app for their own benefit they are helping other students and the iPod itself grow. This experiment embodies the idea of "organized complexity" since like the ants, each person has their own unique skill that they use to increase their one area of the iPod and the combined skills of each person, even though they have no direct relation, benefit the iPod as a whole.