The Connected Lived Of Ants, Brains, And Software By Steven Johnson

Within any community, it is safe to say that the goal of maintaining a society that prospers on for many years is common. Establishing order is key to developing a prosperous society. Order, whether it be defined as assigning roles in society, or establishing a set of rules to maintain control, can be done through various approaches. The pondering question however lies in what is the best approach to establish order. This common question has been prominent throughout time, and has been debated in government and society. The debate in how society should establish order regularly results in contrasting opinions. In the essay "The Myth of the Ant Queen," by Steven Johnson, and in the excerpt “The Code of Hammurabi” from Society and Law in Ancient Babylonia, two distinct approaches to establishing order in society are discussed. I believe that through strict reinforcements, order in society can be established. In the essay “Man’s Nature is Evil” by Hsun Tzu, the human nature in society helps explain why strict reinforcements is the most efficient way to establish order. In Steven Johnson’s essay “The Myth of the Ant Queen,” he describes an interesting way in how the establishment of order arises. He argues that society can build itself up and maintain order without the need of a ruler or a set of laws. Through the observation of ants and how they behave in their environment, he explains how ants are able to establish an intricate yet simple

In the Prologue of Black Ants and Buddhist, the teacher is always engaging her students with real-world situations and meaningful conversations where the students all seem to be comfortable voicing their own opinion. With the discussion led in her classroom children could hear from other perspectives, which I believe will make the students more empathic and understanding to others beliefs and opinions. With the ant situation the children were able to come to an agreement and also a way to prevent ants from invading the classroom again. I loved how this situation was handled and how the children led most of the conversation with such maturity! I hope one day I will be able to manage my classroom with such

In chapter 9 of the book Black Ants and Buddhists it talks about the different situations that families and teachers may encounter inside and outside a classroom setting. One of the situations that it talks about in this chapter is about different types of families and their origins. Talking to students about their families it might be challenging because as a future teacher we might not know what is their situation or who is taking care of them. For instance, last year when I worked in a school I told a student that his mom and dad would be so proud to see that he had made a 100 in the test. I noticed that he was upset when I told him that, he later on told me that he lives with his grandma, I felt bad for the entire day because I didn’t

“The Electric Ant” is a science fiction short story written by Philip K. Dick and published in 1969. In this setting, the story takes place in a distant alternative universe. Mankind’s identity and freedom are being questioned in this futuristic society. Indeed, the plot explores the identity of a protagonist who has been disconnected from reality after an accident, by being transformed into an organic robot. A being that is no longer human despite having the skin, the flesh and the physical body of a man. The story focuses on the shift of reality perceived by an organic robot. Nevertheless, it brings us a closer look at how the perspective of reality is approached from the point of view of a sub-social class. As the story goes on, the protagonist becomes more and more obsessed with his individuality and true freedom. The plot emphasis on the development of the main character’s identity throughout the story.

The article, “The Animals Place: Practicing Complexity”, by Michael Pollan discusses the benefits of natural farming and contrasts in industrial farming. According to Pollan, natural farming is the best way of agriculture. Pollan cites that not only does it provide organic supplies, but the taste of the products are more rich and tasty. Moreover, the article goes more in depth on his experience in an ecological farm called Polyface. I agree with author on the beliefs of farming and cultivating with an environmental method.

In a land far far away there were two anthills. Only two in the land. The anthills were not aware of their existence. In one anthill brimming with collected resources and a fair queen lived the Opie ants. In the other there were corrupted a corrupted queen who made the ants work until their death to satisfy her. Those were the Totie ants. Some of the Totie ants were good and hardworking but some turned evil just like the queen. The Totie ants and the Opie ants had the same anthills but different leader. The Opies had an abundance of food; whereas the Totie ants were starving because the queen only looked after her own well-being and ate all the food. The Totie ants were miserable with their leaders and eventually there

In the book Secret life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd , the main character Lily Owens has two compelling desires, ambitions, obligations, or influences that affect the outcome of the story. As the story unfolds, Lily is faced with an abusive dad and a mother who she loves very much. At the young age of four, Lily, still being a child, accidentally shoots and kills her mother during a confrontation. Now, the young child has two huge, impactful life-changing forces to deal with the rest of her life. She struggles with both of these until she decides to do something about it and go into the amazing world and figure out the truth behind it all. Since she was so young at the time of the events, she didn't remember what went down. She is searching the

A feedback loop takes the power of something and changes it into something that would be considered better and brighter. It is adjusted until the desired object is the output of the system. For example, like Newton’s third law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In “The Myth of the Ant Queen” by Steven Johnson, he explains the level of intelligence behind certain and different types of systems, and deciphers the systems to understand and comprehend what makes them work or survive. Comparing it to Johnson, in “Biographies of Hegemony” by Karen Ho, is the breakdown of how the companies of Wall Street are invading the space of Ivy League institutions and how the students are being groomed to work in certain areas of these

Technology has tremendously changed human social behavior, which has provided a convenient way for people to communicate and collaborate with each other. For instance, Cathy Davidson, the author of “Project Classroom Makeover,” points out, there is a need to renew the current education system so that it meets the new expectation of the digital era. She discusses how technology improves social interaction when students work collectively through crowdsourcing. In “The Myth of the Ant Queen,” Steven Johnson provides the example of the complex systems in ant colonies, cities of Manchester and Internet by emphasizing the importance of collective working that intelligence emerges when people work together. On the other side, Sherry Turkle argues that technology has turned human beings become isolated. In her article “Alone Together: Why We Expect A Lot from Technology and Less from Each Other,” she discusses how humanity is transformed into a “robotic’ moment due to technology. Therefore, technology does not only help to form collective learning and social interaction that can provide an adequate platform for sharing social values, but also isolate people from each other if they rely too much on technology.

Ants and Artists Culture has helped shape human development and form some of the most prominent societies and groups in today’s world. A definition of culture would be the way ones goes about their life that is impacted by the surroundings they live in. One of these societies that culture has helped formed in the fine art world that is discussed in the book The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe. The culture these artists have are specific to them and have many social norms and rules. While it would seem like humans are the only things capable of something as complicated as culture, ants seem to have culture as well.

Once the slime molds exhibited habituation, however, the researchers allowed the slime molds that crossed salted bridges to fuse with slime molds that crossed plain bridges. After fusion, Vogel and Dussatour timed all of the slime molds as they crossed the bridges, and observed that the “mega-cells” formed from the fusion of a normal slime mold and a salt-habituated mold crossed the salted bridges just as fast as the unfused salt-habituated molds. They also found evidence that the habituation in the mega-cells was due to a transfer of knowledge, and not simply because the fused cell was a mixture of the habituated and unhabituated slime molds. This transfer of knowledge became apparent when the researchers noticed that the pseudopod that reached the food at the end of the bridge first most frequently came from the unhabituated section of the fused slime

ants have undergone an interesting history as they evolved from their wasp ancestors. Ants control most of the ecosystems they inhabit. Ants were the first to dominate the land and the air we breath now, on this world.

Everyone is familiar with the state of armed conflict that is war, and for as long as there has been civilization there has been war. Upon first glance, Henry David Thoreau’s “The Battle of the Ants” seems like a simple descriptive story of a battle between two different species of ants, one red and one black, but if one were to further inspect the text, they could see that Thoreau uses the ants and their battle as a satirical allegory for human conflict. Thoreau chooses to use ants as a metaphor to make it clear to the reader that war is futile, pointless, and a waste of life.

Defining intelligence is extremely difficult and researchers now think that there are lots of different aspects to it, including; social, logical, creative, emotional and practical intelligence. The correct representation of the word is arguably a matter of opinion as there are many different definitions. With this argument in mind, it makes the task of arguing a Computers level of intelligence (if any) harder as, ultimately, each person’s definition could be different. A part of being intelligent is the ability for something/someone to be able to think for themselves which most computers aren’t able to do as they are simply programmed to perform certain functions which means that they are not in control of their response. However modern technologies have the propensity to make decisions based on an input from an end user. For example Apples ‘Siri’ service turns voice commands in visual and audio responses.

One warm night, he came through the bedroom window. His sudden intrusion angered me. That was the first time I saw him in this house. His tiny round eyes seemed innocent enough, but he was frightened by my stare. His skinny long legs were trembling. He turned his head, saying, "I'm completely lost." That was certainly not a good excuse for breaking into my private property. "Hey, YOU, get outta here," I said as I picked him and threw him out of the window. "Never come back!"