“I think the phrase "fractal-like" is inaccurate because one of the concepts discussed in the book is that ignorance is key - that if the individual parts are too complex the full pattern would reflect an entirely different type of evolution. Fractals are equally complex regardless of scale.The wonder of the book is that completely simple things - identical body cells, slime-mold, etc, create systems that are disproportionally complex. My opinion.”
“This book's theme is "complex adaptive systems that display emergent behavior". The fractal-like symmetries include the human brain's pattern recognition, human traffic networks' swarming like decentralized ant colonies, & cities' emergence (i.e. simple elements self-organize to form intelligent high-level adaptive behavior). Details topics such as Toshiyuki Nakagaki's amoeba-like slime mold capable of solving shortest maze routes, Giaccamo Rizzollati's chimpanzee "mirror neurons" to learn from eachother, E. O. Wilson's pheromone tracking in ants, & Robert Wright's global brain. Positive feedback discovers particular sources; randomness discovers multiple sources. Bottom up intellignce is beginning to surpass quality managment in US. Media networks priority favorite viewer content on home page. Computer games are becoming the ultimate early adopter. Cities will continue to exist because "industries driven by ideas naturally gravitate toward physical centers of idea generation, even in an age of instant data transmissions." Supports eBay, slashdot & others. May be of most interest to those who seek to identify common patterns across a range of scales.”
