A very interesting term that came up in the text was “organized complexity.” This term is first used to describe the chaotic city of Manchester in the 1800s and the 1900s. This term can be used to link all of the systems mentioned throughout Johnson’s essay. When Johnson visits Deborah Gordon and her harvester ant colony, he initially observes pure chaos, similar to the New York subway system at rush hour. However, Gordon points out that there is actually some sort of marginal system in play. The ants have developed a cemetery, waste area, and other key designations found in a human society. So, despite the chaos, there is a hint of a system in place.
This idea of “organized complexity” is later referenced to be involved in the development of the idea of software and the first self-learning complex computers developed by Alan Turing and Claude Shannon. It was observed that as the system learned what was wrong and what was right, it gradually changed its accuracy. The system alludes to a motorized billiards table with specific rules, “...where the balls follow specific rules and through their various interactions create a distinct macrobehavior, arranging themselves in a specific shape, or forming a specific pattern over time”(Johnson 203). This aspect of the organized complexity offers a new point of view to the problem in Davidson’s “Project Classroom Makeover.” The fact that the education system in United States has not been updated in about 100 years is likely due to the fact that simply no one saw anything wrong with it until recently. Like the computer that Turing and Shannon developed, the system gradually fixes itself, even if it may be after hundreds of years. It just takes some driving force to tell it what’s wrong and what’s right, which in this case is Davidson’s iPod program. In reference to Johnson's motorized billiards table analogy, the program is the motorized part of the billiard board that produces the "macrobehavior" that improves the education system. Through Johnson’s essay and its shared horizon with Davidson’s essay, the world is filled with systems that correct themselves to help multiple societies progress.
Artists and writers themselves also modify the 'plagiarisms' to fit their needs. Their 'organized complexity' is where they find old ideas and place them on new concepts. They would change what is wrong and what is right to suit the needs of their new material. However this behavior is all but a small variation in the grand scheme, in the 'macrobehavior', as in with each new author changing ideas, there is a movement as humanity progresses over time, which could be representative of culture.
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