Self-Organizing Systems In The Myth Of The Ant Queen, By Karen Ho
1470 Words6 Pages
Institutions such as Princeton and Harvard, or even Wall Street are sometimes known and seen as complex self-organizing systems. These institutions explained in Karen Ho’s “Biographies of Hegemony” compared to the examples in Steven Johnson’s “The Myth of the Ant Queen” about ant colonies and Manchester being complex self-organizing systems show a number of similarities based on the way they interact. For example, both authors, Ho and Johnson, talk about how smart a group of people are, but Ho describes it as “smartness,” whereas Johnson describes it as “intelligence.” When talking about smartness, Ho is talking about these groups of Ivy League students that are characterized as smart, and are capable of working for Wall Street. Ho writes…show more content… In Karen Ho’s essay, “Biographies of Hegemony,” she talks about the Ivy League institutions, such as Princeton and Harvard, and also Wall Street. By seeing the descriptions and explanations of these institutions it is very certain that these institutions are in fact “complex self-organizing systems.” The first meaning of complex self-organizing systems came from Steven Johnson’s essay of “The Myth of the Ant Queen.” In Johnson’s story he defines complex self-organizing systems as a group of individuals or things that work together or even individually without a leader to do what they have to do. Examples in Johnson’s essay include the ant colonies, and the people of Manchester that lived without a leader or a ruler that told the residents what to do and how to live their life, without laws and rules. Even though Manchester had no rules, the place was calm and people maintained a healthy lifestyle with both success and survival. They organized themselves in a way, and proved it was possible to live without a leader, and showed what a complex self-organized system meant. This is something that Ho showed in her essay by showing how the individuals at the Ivy Leagues behaved and reacted, and how they were in a “complex self-organizing system,” without really knowing it. Both Karen Ho’s “Biographies of Hegemony” and Steven Johnson’s “The Myth of the Ant Queen” show examples of “complex self-organizing systems” in a number of examples and