What makes a group of blind and completely unintelligent ants work together in such a beautifully choreographed way? How can thousands of fireflies in Thailand blink with complete synchronization? These questions fall under the scientific exploration of emergence, which attempts to explain . . . well . . . all sorts of things, like how the brain works, how a collective mind is always more intelligent than a single individual and how neighborhoods were shaped. It is particularly relevant to the development of the "bottom-up" phenomena that has emerged on the internet (Google, Amazon, ebay, youtube, etc), open source software, and the history of the internet itself. Anyways, here's a link to a fantastic
radio special I was fortunate enough to listen to on my way home tonight. It's an hour long, but you can probably get the gist of it in far less time than that. I ended up sitting in my car for half-an-hour after I got home just to listen to the whole thing. There also seems to be a bunch of other very cool radio shows on this web site.
The next and seemingly obvious question (at least for me) is: "How can a study of emergence be a generator of architectural forms?" One simple answer involves circulation on a college campus - eventually students will wear in a dirt path if a paved one does not exist. Mimicking emergent forms in nature (such as termite mounds) is another potential use of emergence as a form generator. Perhaps we can study this a bit in 670.
