That subtitle gives some sense of the book’s specific subject matter, though the primary theme of the book was more abstract: it was an examination of self-organizing systems, like city neighborhoods or ant colonies, systems that lacked traditional leadership structures or command hierarchies but that nonetheless managed to solve complex problems. MORE >>

The logical, but less interesting way would just be to create a bunch of chapters organized by discipline: great ideas in the arts, in science, in nature. If there's one thing I'm known for as a writer, it's my habit of writing across disciplines, connecting multiple fields in a single book or narrative. MORE >>

few minutes later in the Clinton interview, the conversation turned to the role of corporations in global change: I think first of all more of our companies are involved globally, and more of our citizens are involved through non-governmental organizations, even if it’s just through Internet giving, modest amounts of money. lowering hand.] MORE >>

rain forest, on the other hand, is such an efficient system for using energy because there are so many organisms exploiting every tiny niche of the nutrient cycle. decided to take a look at the premise of Web 2.0 that has been tossed around a lot over the last few years, without getting too bogged down in the details (i.e., Those Web 1.0 MORE >>

Almost exactly five years ago, I went out to lunch with my old friends Mark Bailey and Andy Karsch, and somehow over the course of our meal I got to talking about this idea I'd been harboring for several months about building some sort of web service that would organize local bloggers by neighborhood and zip code. MORE >>