Monday, September 28, 2009

Emergence - Rob Stone

I really liked the excerpt's use of ant colony life as a comparative tool for humanity. It was interesting to look at how our operation as a sort of "ant colony" has enabled connectivity in an information-oriented sense; although, this idea of human society being a global network in the mold of an ant colony also gives rise to the problem of dehumanization. If we are all ants just going about our business, occasionally using our colony's connections to distribute and gather information, we are at risk of diminishing the amount of actual "human" interaction that takes place - something that we can already see happening with the advent of computerized networking and internet communication.

For another interesting articulation of the idea I have presented, here's a clip from the film Waking Life: Ants

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