For some reason when you promise to do something on a blog, you tend to do it (or at least I do). So I'm going to promise to give JamesB his Emergence by Steven Johnson book back.
While I'm on the subject, it's great. I won't go on too much, since you can just read the synopsis on the link above, but suffice to say here that it's about how systems can self organise - emerge - from the bottom up. Group intelligence if you like, from the even the dumbest individuals organising in a certain way to become collectively brilliant. Examples include how ant colonies organise themselves, how cities think and how computers can learn.
Of course it's useful for all sorts of plannery things. But forget all that, it's simply interesting.
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