Weblog 9

An example of emergent behavior that I participated in was last week in the Dolan atrium. The professors had the students grab t-shirts with different colors, numbers, and letters on them. Next, the professors gave us simple tasks to complete: some of these tasks included following someone that is not in your FYS section, creating words with the letters on our shirts, lining up in numerical order, etc. These simple tasks led to other, more complex things being accomplished. For example, when told to follow someone not in your section, all the students eventually created a very long line of students following each other. Another example is when we were told to follow someone in our section; this led to each section forming a circle. There were many more examples of simple tasks leading to more complex tasks being accomplished. This is an example of emergence because it is a direct restatement of the definition of emergence. The definition describes simple tasks being formed into more complex tasks. This exercise was emergence from my perspective and from a global perspective. The exercise was video taped so we could see what it looks like globally. It is obviously going to look a little different from the two points of view, but it is still going to have the same outcome. Overall it was a pretty interesting experience.