I remember reading about Jonny Hornby’s secret of success – "Surround yourself with people cleverer than you" – whichis why I try and work with JamesB as often as possible. We met for coffee yesterday, officially for a debrief on some research but also to pick his brains.
He’s let me borrow Emergence, by Steven Johnson, which I’ve only just started, but it’s already absorbing. The basis of the book is how change can occur from the bottom up, collective intelligence with no one actually in charge. In the intro, there’s a story of bioligists unable to explain the behaviour of organic slime until they got help from someone able to do complex mathematics.
I like the way it shows how two apparently unrelated specialisms came together to solve the problem, how the solution to a biology problem was actually maths. Jonny Hornby’s got a point no?
NORTHERN PLANNER 
Leave a comment