Steven "Emergence/Feed/Suck" Johnson has started a wicked new blog. Woohoo!
David Talbot, celebrating Salon's 7th birthday, is nice enough to include a shout out to FEED (which I co-created many moons ago) and Suck (which I briefly helped run from 2000-2001) before thumbing his nose, rightfully, at the Salon doomsayers: "Salon has outlived many worthy Web colleagues — let us observe a moment of silence for the likes of Suck, Hotwired, Feed, Word and APBNews.com,
Steven "Emergence" Johnson interviewed in the WELL's public conference:
The emergent systems that I talk about in the book are systems that
are made of many lower-level constituent parts, each of which follows
relatively simple rules of interaction and lacks an awareness of the
overall state of the system.
In this thought-provoking piece on The Crypto Syllabus, Evgeny Morozov talks to Brian Eno about the current NFT craze.
Brian Eno is one of the most accomplished artists working today. Having given us the genre of ambient music, he also produced many of the most remarkable acts of the past 40+ years.
Boing Boing favorite Steven Johnson (previously) has written at length about the emerging politics of "liberaltarianism" in Silicon Valley, which favors extensive government regulation (of all industries save tech), progressive taxation, universal basic income, universal free health care, free university, debt amnesty for students — but no unions and worker acceptance of "volatility, job loss, and replacement by technology."
Before there were Nixie tubes, there were edge-lit displays: "Each digit panel has a tiny incandescent lamp associated with it that lights when that the numeral on the panel is to be displayed. When the tiny lamp corresponding to a given digit panel lights, the light is injected into the edge of the plastic panel. — Read the rest
I first started writing about the remarkable Joi Ito in 2002, and over the decade and a half since, I've marvelled at his polymath abilities -- running international Creative Commons, starting and investing in remarkable tech businesses, getting Timothy Leary's ashes shot into space, backing Mondo 2000, using a sprawling Warcraft raiding guild to experiment with leadership and team structures, and now, running MIT's storied Media Lab -- and I've watched with excitement as he's distilled his seemingly impossible-to-characterize approach to life in a set of 9 compact principles, which he and Jeff Howe have turned into Whiplash, a voraciously readable, extremely exciting, and eminently sensible book.
Lots of board games from the 20th century just plain suck. Monopoly and Risk are positive-feedback games where the first person to gain a slight advantage inevitably becomes the runaway winner a couple of tedious hours later. In Candy Land the winner is determined when the deck is shuffled – players make no decisions (other than the wise one of burning the game and burying the ashes in salted earth). — Read the rest
Defender, to the death, of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga. Architect of Philip K. Dick’s induction into the Library of America. College drop-out. MacArthur Genius. Comic-book guy. Jonathan Lethem is a man of obscure obsessions and unabashed passions.
If you're looking for a comprehensive explanation for modern life is how it is, there are probably other books to read. But if you're looking for something light, informative and fun, HOW WE GOT TO NOW is just the thing.
There's also a PBS TV show that goes along with it.
Steven Johnson blends the history of science with keen social observation to tell the story of how our modern world came about—and where it's headed. Cory Doctorow reviews How We Got to Now, also a six-part PBS/BBC series, which ties together a lifetime of work
To inaugurate the publication of his brilliant new book How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (also a PBS/BBC TV series), Steven Johnson has written about the difficult balance between reporting on the history of world-changing ideas and the inventors credited with their creation
In Steven Johnson's latest, Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age, he proposes that people who believe in the Internet are not techno-utopians, but rather "peer progressives" -- people who believe that progress is possible when peers work together through non-hierarchical, networked systems.
Lawyers representing Jeff Koons, the pop artist known for remixing common objects and other peoples' art, have demanded that San Francisco's Park Life stop selling book-ends that look like balloon dogs. Koons's lawyers argue that since Koons once produced a set of iconic statues of balloon dogs, all representations of balloon dogs are henceforth Koons's exclusive purview, and anyone who makes or sells a balloon dog infringes on Koons's copyright. — Read the rest
Welcome to the second half of the 2010 Boing Boing Gift Guide, where we pick out some of our favorite books from the last year (and beyond) to help you find inexpensive holiday gifts for friends and family. Can you guess who chose a Sarah Palin book?
This week, Rick Kleffel, one of my favorite book interviewers, talks to Kevin Kelly about his book What Technology Wants, one of the best books I've ever read about technology. The conversation is fascinating.
Here's a short video promo for Steven Johnson's upcoming Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, a lecture on the way that transformative ideas incubate for long times, come out of left field, and thrive best when there's no one foreclosing on them because they're too weird or disruptive. — Read the rest
At the end of workshops at the Institute for the Future we often ask participants to sum up their experience in one word or one sentence. Applying the technique to myself, I would sum up my whole life in one phrase: From Odessa to the Future. — Read the rest
Scientific American surveys new research on whether playing videogames might be good for our brains. For example, one recent study by University of Rochester cognitive scientist Daphne Bavelier that I've blogged about previously suggests that games can exercise and enhance certain core vision functions. — Read the rest
The Associated Press, in its zeal to keep the news a secret, has begun to send legal threats to itself. WTNQ-FM, an AP affiliate in Tennessee, received the legal threat over its YouTube channel, through which it makes its/AP's material available to its listeners. — Read the rest
If you're looking for a comprehensive explanation for modern life is how it is, there are probably other books to read. But if you're looking for something light, informative and fun, 
