WebLog 9

“Describe an example of Emergent Behavior that you participated in or that you witnessed”
Justify why your example constitutes Emergence, describe the scenario from both your individual perspective and a global perspective (outside observer)

Before I could accurately describe and example of Emergent Behavior, I had to first do research and figure out what exactly Emergent Behavior is. Through my research I found that Emergent Behavior is "behavior of a system that is not explicitly described by the behavior of the components of the system, and is therefore unexpected to a designer or observer" (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EmergentBehavior). To explain that definition, I interpreted Emergent Behavior as when you have a bunch of parts, like in a bike. And each part has its own set of properties, like the bell, chain, and wheels. When you put all of the parts together they make something completely different, in the case a bicycle that is used for transpiration or a sport. Another example of Emergent Behavior would be something I participated in during class Wednesday. Everyone who participated had on colored shirts with letters on the back and numbers on the front. The group as a whole was asked to do different tasks. The one task that sticks out the most was when the group as a whole had to create a letter. Half of the room started forming an M, then it turned into a W, and then without knowledge of everyone participating it turned into the letter e. Only part of the group was affected by turning into the e, and the rest was pretty much clueless that they were in an e. Another form could be traffic jams. Each individual is contributing by either slowing down, stopping or speeding up, yet half of the time none of them know how exactly they are contributing.