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Article: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. (Books in review: of slime mold and software).(Review)
- Article from:
- The American Prospect
- Article date:
- November 19, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The American Prospect, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software By Steven Johnson. Scribner, 288 pages, $25.00
IT'S EASY TO SEE WHY THERE aren't more books like Steven Johnson's Emergence: Only Johnson knows how to write them. Johnson was a founder and editor of Feed, one of the Web's first and best "zines" (now moribund, unfortunately, thanks to the economic downturn). Feed aimed to show that there was no contradiction between maintaining high literary standards and creating online community; and it succeeded, in large part, because Johnson himself is both media savvy and a skilled writer. Johnson's first book, Interface Culture (1997), was probably the ...