You can think of complex systems as being build of smaller, very simple, irreducible parts. When there are enough small parts, that all interact together, we have what's called an emergent phenomena. The "Game of Life" was one example of this. You might find this neat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

In terms of the monkeys I'm thinking of them almost as automata that make random acts on the keyboard. Then we need a way to look at their acts and discard the ones that aren't productive toward producing Shakespeare and keep those that do. Something to shape their collective motion.