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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Radio Lab: Emergence

A great audio exploration of organization from chaos, order from the accidental: ants, cities, fireflies and life itself.

clipped from www.wnyc.org

What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies, all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony.
How?
We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, even our very own brains.
Featured: author Steven Johnson, fire-flyologists John and Elizabeth Buck, biologist E.O. Wilson, Ant expert Debra Gordon, mathematician Steve Strogatz, economist James Surowiecki, and neurologists Oliver Sacks and Christof Koch.