Steven Johnson, "The Myth of the Ant Queen," and:

• Malcolm Gladwell, "The Power of Context"
• William Greider, "Work Rules" and Lani Guinier, "Second Proms and Second Primaries: The Limits of Majority Rule"

Johnson & Gladwell: The Matter of Complexity

In your first essay you dealt with the issues of context and character, and the notion that small changes and circumstantial events can have enormous impact on human behavior. Moving from Gladwell to Steven Johnson, we encounter another counterintuitive theory: namely, that complex social organizations have, in a sense, minds of their own that don't depend upon the decisions of their individual members, or upon the influence of leaders or the individuals Johnson refers to as “pacemakers” (251). According to Johnson, “larger patterns” of behavior and organization “can emerge out of uncoordinated local actions,” and this phenomenon occurs most strikingly in cities (255). “The city is complex because it overwhelms, yes,” Johnson writes, “but also because it has a coherent personality, a personality that self-organizes out of millions of individual decisions” (255).

Utilizing your understanding of Gladwell's theory of context and its profound effects on behavior, write an essay that addresses the following question: What role might “the smallest details of the immediate environment” (Gladwell 185) play in Johnson's understanding of cities as “self-organizing system[s]” (254) and “pattern-amplifying machine[s]” (255)?

Here are some questions to get you started in your thinking: Do Gladwell and Johnson conceive of “environment” in the same way? How might the distinction Johnson draws between the “two kinds of complexity” involved in thinking about urban life (254-55) help you shift your focus from individual effects to “larger patterns” in formulating your project? To what degree can local environments be seen as versions of the “self-organizing system[s]” Johnson is so interested in? How great a role do you think accidents and chance situations play in originating what will become complex, self-organizing systems?

Richard Squibbs, Fall 2005

Greider, Guinier, Johnson and Self-Organization

William Greider's essay describes the workplace as a space that has the potential to confer various sorts of pleasure and satisfaction to a group of people engaged in a common enterprise. The office, the factory, and their equivalents determine, he claims, the civic engagement of Americans by “socializing” them into patterns of behavior that become routine. Let's assume Greider's proposal is feasible and the workers of the world own the businesses that currently employ them. Based on Greider's text, how might such a world of worker-owned business challenge, complicate, or confirm the ideals, difficulties, or consequences of the models of self-organization, democracy, and decision making discussed by Johnson and Guinier?

Brian Page, Fall 2005

For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please visit the Johnson link-o-mat.

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