"The Myth of the Ant Queen" was a fascinating article and it left me with many more questions. I will now be much more conscious of my decisions and movements as part of a pattern. I can't help but think of IBM's commercials about "building smarter cities" as an attempt to corral all of these movements, trends, crimes, money spent, and personal narratives of the urban landscape into some sort of comprehensible computer data stream. Every time I pass through the turnstile into the subway, does that send a little click into the mainframe? A series of 1s and 0s indicating one passenger at the Lombard - South station on the SEPTA orange line at 12:35pm on Wednesday, October 7, 2009? One loaf of Dutch Country whole wheat bread purchased for $3.59 plus tax at the South Square Supermarket at 7pm on Monday, October 5, 2009 with a PNC Bank check card in my name. Does each little detail add up to something? What could that possibly mean? It must mean something...

Anyways, I also wonder what role do shantytowns play as urban environments. Do they resemble the mold of Manchester with their explosive growth in a short amount of time, considering the recession? Are they just like any other neighborhood within the city - a moving of people together that share similar attributes? The shantytowns seem to lack the planning and government services of the surrounding area in which they reside, but government does sometimes intervene. I doubt there is a queen, metaphorically or actually, within such communities, but perhaps some other driving force compelling them to act in such ways as to survive. Where does the order emerge?