How Do Ants Interact With The Ants Working Together?

Many believe that interactions produce knowledge. This is seen in Cathy Davidson’s “Project Classroom Makeover” and in Steven Johnson’s “The Myth of the Ant Queen.” Davidson discusses the importance of working collaboratively. Johnson explores different systems and the interactions within them. The system is made of many individuals that need to communicate to solve certain problems. Both authors discuss the hierarchies and how it limits individuals from collectively working together. Without a hierarchy, interactions between individuals allow for them to solve problems.
The two authors present individuals working together. Davidson shows this with the iPod experiments that use crowdsourcing. Davidson explains how “crowdsourcing means inviting
Johnson implies that without a hierarchy that these ants use their instincts to possess different jobs. The interaction between these ants allows the safety of the queen. What would happen if these ants did not work together? These ants would not be able to keep their queen safe. If there is no safety the queen would not be able to reproduce, therefore killing the ant species. If these ants did not work together they would not have “built the cemetery at exactly the point that is farthest away from the colony” (Johnson 195). The interactions within the ants make it possible to utilize the community they live in. The ants have “collectively decided to utilize these two areas as trash heap and a cemetery” (Johnson 195). This premise of working collectively has benefited each ant to accomplish more. The only way each ant can survive is if they work collectively to create this symbiotic system. Johnson implies that humans are similar to this. Subconsciously humans use each other to survive. This is shown when he compares the “tubing and cramped conditions and surging crowds bring one thought immediately to the mind: the New York subway system, rush hour” (Johnson 193). Johnson implies that this disorganized system unifies people because it allows for people to be an “undifferentiated mass.” Both authors discuss the importance of working together and how it allows for a symbiotic relationship between
Davidson shows this with how individuals solve problems better when there is no hierarchy because hierarchy limits the number of different ways people think. Individuals are solving their problems by “sharing insight” because it allows for different ideas that can allow them to think differently (Davidson 51). Davidson implies throughout her passage that hierarchies limit crowdsourcing therefore limiting the way individuals think. Different ideas are necessary because multiplicity allows different techniques to solve problems. With different partners comes an educational innovation that teaches individuals to help others so that they can learn from their mistakes. Davidson shows this “in the music department, composing student’s uploaded compositions to their iPods so their fellow students could listen and critique” (Davidson 53). The word “critique” is crucial due to the fact that individuals learn from others so that they can better their work. Not only do individuals learn but they are fixing the problems wrong with their work. Johnson uses Turing as an example of thinking in multiple ways due to different ideas that others have discussed with him. Johnson states how: “Turing began to think about the problem of biological development in mathematical terms, leading the way to the ‘Morphogenesis’ paper, published in 1952 that Evelyn Fox Keller would rediscover more than a decade later” (Johnson 201).