Posts from Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson at Elisabeth Irwin High School Next Monday

All of my kids have attended Elisabeth Irwin High School in NYC. The school was founded by Elisabeth Irwin 90 years ago. In commemoration of the 90th anniversary, they are doing a speaker series with noted thinkers, artists, authors, and activists.

When the school asked me last year for ideas of people who could speak about big ideas in and around the subject of technology, the first person I thought of was my friend Steven Johnson. One thing led to another and Steven said yes and he will be at Elisabeth Irwin HS next Monday night.

Steven has been hard at work finishing a new book called Future Perfect. I've read the early version and it is a fantastic treatise on the potential for technology and the Internet to lead us to a new political worldview. Talk about big ideas!

There are something like 60 seats available at the time of this post for next monday night's talk. The ticket price is $20. If you'd like to attend, go here and buy a ticket online. You can also call to get a ticket. Details are here. I hope to see you there.

#Web/Tech

Where Good Ideas Come From

I've been reading my friend Steven Johnson's new book Where Good Ideas Come From. Steven gave me an advance copy of the book. It is available for pre-order at Amazon [kindle here] and it will be released on October 5th.

I hope Steven is not a stranger to any of you. His books over the past decade are some of my favorites and his take on the intersection between technology, science, society, culture, and innovation is unique and important.

Good Ideas (as I call it) is an examination of the sources of creativity in all of us. It is a deeply scientific book but it reads more like a narrative, which is one of Steven's gifts. He tells wonderful stories about science.

I've been pulling quotes from the book for several weeks onto my tumblog (aka my commonplace book). If you follow me on Tumblr, you will have seen a number of them. I will keep doing that until I finish the book which may happen this week.

Steven showed me this four minute video last week on his iPad. It is an excellent (and whimsical) summary of the book and has all of the core concepts in it.

Steven gave a talk about Good Ideas at TED Oxford in July. TED just posted it to the web today. Here it is. It is worth watching if you have the time (17 mins long). If you watch it all the way to the end you'll hear a great story about the invention of GPS.

Good Ideas is as close to a must read for this audience as there is. It has informed and amplified my thinking about innovation and creativity and I am sure it will do the same for you.



#Books#VC & Technology#Web/Tech