One idea that really stood out to me was the critique of reductionism and emphasis on emergence. The author argues that while breaking a system into parts can help us understand structure, it fails to explain the behavior when many parts interact together. I really liked the example of the ant colonies as the every single ant follows just simple rules, but together the colony displays intelligence, coordination and problem solving. This really made me think how intelligence doesn’t really require complexity at an individual level, it can arise from interactions.
What also really stood out to me was the idea that we should focus less on “What is X” and more on “What will X do in the presence of Y”. This feels really connected to interactive media and computation in general as behavior emerges through systems rather than isolated elements. The reading made me really think about if complex systems can immerge from simple rules how much creative control do we really have when designing a system? But overall I really enjoyed the reading and I can surely say it has changed how I think about complexity and the connection between systems and nature in general.