Taivo Lints Blog

A book from 1998. It is apparently written with the goal to explain the concept of emergence to a broader audience, but I'm not so sure if the broader audience would actually like it...

While trying to make clear what emergence is, the book touches on the following subjects: model building (especially in computers), board games, game theory, machine learning, agent-based modeling, metaphors and innovation. For understanding and studying the essence of emergence, John Holland proposes a concept constrained generating procedures, explained by him as follows: "The models that result are dynamic, hence procedures; the mechanisms that underpin the model generate the dynamic behavior; and the allowed interactions between the mechanisms constrain the possibilities, in the way that the rules of a game constrain the possible board configurations."

I found the book somewhat interesting, but not particularly attractive.

More information at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0192862111