The Myth of the Ant Queen

The Myth of the Ant Queen was quite an interesting read. I found myself agreeing with most of what was said in this essay and looking for examples that I had seen that had been built out of the theories of a somewhat organized chaos that created a system of working things. Its almost overwhelming to look at some of the basic necessities we have today and imagine the complexity of such common household items like computers, ipods, palm pilots, and so on. As was described in the latter part of the essay, things like voice recognition consist of hundreds of smaller individual systems that eventually lead to a larger efficient operating system. It is mind-blowing to even comprehend the amount of time and labor that would go into making something that is seemingly so simple and yet so very complex!
The evolution of Manchester early on in the essay was incredible! It almost does not seem like something like that could actually happen, but then I think back to some of the places that I have been and everything seems to have its place. Apparently it is somewhat of a common phenomenon to see in larger cities. I know that in the city of Manila there is definitely a split of the classes creating the slums, high-class areas, and business areas. There is no real head authority of the slums but surely they have made for themselves a common selling place, washing place, and living areas. Although Manchester was quite a miraculous city seeing as it wasn’t much of anything to start with and was able to progress into quite an industrious place. In large cities today it seems like people are forced into the situations that they are in. Because large cities, generally speaking, only get larger then these are defined and developed areas have no other choice but to expand. Places with business get more businesses due to an ever-increasing amount of people and need to employ, while living areas for the different classes become larger as well. It seems only natural that if smaller place that is organized by individuals and has no plan slowly becomes larger those already set standards would still be followed. It is easier to follow the leader and go where things are already functional. Why bother with setting up something new and different if you already know that there is a place where you know you can function. It seems like a logical theory that thousands of individuals can create a seemingly working organized system, as chaotic as it may appear.
Overall, I really enjoyed the read and found it to be very insightful into some of the things happening around me that I may not even notice. It was very interesting to see the evolution of this idea of separate individual systems that contribute and create a larger functional system.
http://www.thecaveonline.com/APEH/dbqmanchester.html
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/