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negotiations take a back seat in terms of the creative drafting process.
In reality, most (if not all) stigmergic wiki collaborations have
discussions associated with the content being developed, but it is
possible to contribute (to Wikipedia.org, for instance) without
discussing your contribution with others. This does not preclude
discussion in such systems (chat rooms, bulletin boards, email lists),
but such discussions are typically secondary to the objectives of the
overall project.
Strength of Emergence
Complexity theorists draw a distinction between strong and weak
emergence. Simply put, if you can work out what happened after the
event then the Emergence is 'weak'. If you have absolutely no idea
what happened (like consciousness emerging from a bunch of cells)
then it is 'strong'. All emergence in the business world is weak
and can be rationalized ex-post giving the (likely spurious)
impression of understanding what happened.
Some Implications of Emergence
Emergence is a reality in complex contexts and always has been. It is a
pervasive phenomenon and is continuously operating. Business
strategists need to be aware of a number of key implications of
Emergence.
The Idea of Historical Progress
Until the last few decades, the conventional view of progress was
linear and goal-directed (teleological); the idea that there is an (ideal)
terminal state toward which society is heading. Based on the ideas of
stigmergic action an alternative explanation exists.
This view contends that one cannot consider the development of any
particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire
gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected
events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of
their own motivations (e.g., profit, curiosity, religious) with no concept
of the final, modern result to which the actions of either them or their
contemporaries would lead. The interplay of the results of these
isolated events is what drives history and innovation.
The implications are threefold.
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