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I think a good model must be relatively simple, (something you could explain the logic of in a few sentences) based on a real world example or phenomenon and should accurately reproduce the phenomenon. Langton's ant strikes me as an extremely interesting model, but ultimately one that has little other value. Other models we have looked at, like the traffic model and the flock of birds, have more potential use in explaining real world phenomena. Certainly langton's ant, the game of life, and CA are interesting and potentially very useful, but it is harder to see how these models can be used as more than a sort of "proof of concept" showing that yes, emergence does exist. I think if emergence is to gain acceptance as an important way of looking at and understanding the world we should be modeling things that actually occur and looking for the simple rules that can produce them.