emergence

One of the clearest examples of emergent phenomena is provided by the mathematical concept of cellular automata - a cell has one of a number of states (the simplest might just have states on and off), and is aware only of the states of its immediate neighbors. Different types of automata have the cells change their states based on simple rules - the most famous example is Conway's Game of Life, which has a rule that if a cell is turned off but has three neighboring cells that are on, it should turn on. Although the rules for automata are small, simple, and local, surprising large-scale patterns can emerge - patterns that are neither intended nor predictable based on the local rules themselves.

patterns that emerge
in Ulam's two-step automata

Often when we think of emergent technology, we imagine new technology: technology being born, emerging into the world as an entity onto itself. The notion of emergence provided by cellular automata and other models of emergence tell us something different - the elements at the local level (think of this as individual technologies and their intended uses) do not prepare or inform us about what patterns will play out at larger scales.

A similar caution about identifying what is important about technology with what is new is provided by David Edgerton's book The Shock of the Old (see a review in the Guardian, here), which reminds us that the impact of new technology is dwarfed by older technology, and that "invention is not the same as utilization". In looking at the phenomena of emergence, utilization - how technology interacts with people, systems, and life, is what matters.

Attempts to predict large scale patterns that will emerge from technology show how hard it is to anticipate emergent phenomena.

In 2010, then Google CEO Eric Schmidt authored an article for the magazine Foreign Affairs entitled The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power (available here), which attempted to peer ahead into how connection technologies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) would impact geopolitics. It is instructive to read this article in light of how these connection technologies have since been used to undermine democracy - from the scandals of Brexit, the 2016 American election, and the use of data obtained from Cambridge Analytica to fuel the false news supplied by troll farms. Schmidt's insistence that governments should get out of the way of corporations so that connection technologies can be allowed to promote transparency, freedom and democracy, seems worse than self-serving.

Futurists, techno optimists and pessimists cannot be blamed for being wrong - emergent technology is more than the hardware and software that corporations are selling, and technology use is not directed by our intentions, good or otherwise.