Two of our happy mutants: the science writer Stephen Johnson and the oblique strategist Brian Eno on the nature of art, literature, and science.

Over at Medium, Steven Johnson, author of How We Got To Now, writes about how the 19th century invention of flash photography shined a light on poverty.

"Flash Forward: How We Got To Know"

Steven Johnson — a real favorite around here! — has a new six-part PBS show coming this October called How We Got to Now, along with companion book. The trailer (above) gives a tantalizing hint of how great this show will be, as does the excerpt from the first episode that's also available. — Read the rest

Author Steven Johnson spoke to the Gameological Society about his latest book, Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age, and the games he enjoys playing.

The Gameological Society: What are you playing this weekend?

Steven Johnson: Well, I’m on book tour, so there’s very little play.

Science writer Steven Johnson's latest book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation is, in some ways, a classic Johnson book: drawing from diverse sources across many disciplines, Johnson recounts historical scientific breakthroughs and draws from them parallels to modern technology, particularly networked computers and the way that they shape the societies around them. — Read the rest

Steven Johnson and Kevin Kelly both have provocative new books out. Steven's is Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation while Kevin's is titled "What Technology Wants." Wired sat them both down for a conversation. The way these two think, talk, and riff, I'm glad I wasn't the one responsible for editing that chat down into a couple of pages of readable text. — Read the rest

Here's Steven Johnson's TED Talk about The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, "his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society." — Read the rest

BB pal Steven "Invention of Air" Johnson sez, "thought you might want to link to the pretty funny interview I did on Colbert last night, including an excellent little exchange about an imaginary Founder Father named Robert Cornhole who should really have a Wikipedia page." — Read the rest

A reminder of an event I mentioned here on the blog last week — LIVE from the NYPL and WIRED Magazine are hosting a roundtable discussion with Lessig, Shepard Fairey, and Steven Berlin Johnson this Thursday Feb. 26 in NYC. — Read the rest

On February 26 at the New York Public Library, there will be a group discussion with Lawrence Lessig, Shepard Fairey and former Boing Boing guest blogger Steven Johnson. The event is said to be Lessig's final planned public discussion of remix, copyright issues, and so on, before he departs Harvard this fall to head up the Safra Center for Ethics. — Read the rest

I'm happy to welcome our new guest blogger, Steven Berlin Johnson! I've long been an admirer of Steven's extraordinary writing. He's the author of six books, most of which will be familiar to Boing Boing readers, including the recent bestsellers Everything Bad Is Good For You and The Ghost Map. — Read the rest

Steven Johnson's latest book,
The Invention of Air, is a wide-ranging, learned, engrossing biography of the polymath pioneering scientist, Joseph Priestley. Priestley, a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, was a kind of radical scientist/politician/theologian, an all-but-unimaginable combination in today's world of politicised science and deep fractures between faith and empiricism. — Read the rest

Episode #6 of the Boing Boing Boing podcast is ready for downloading. Our guest for this edition is author Steven Johnson, whose new book "The Ghost Map" my blog-mate Pesco describes as:

An account of an 1854 cholera outbreak on London's Broad Street [and] a magnificent combination of science thriller, cultural history, and celebration of cartography as a powerful tool to help us understand the dynamics of urban life.

Last week, Steven Johnson published his excellent new book The Ghost Map, a scientific thriller about an 1854 cholera outbreak on London's Broad Street in Soho. Through the story of the two Soho residents who solved the mystery of how cholera is transmitted, The Ghost Map celebrates cartography in the context of neighborhood knowledge, the wisdom about a place that can only come from living there. — Read the rest

BB pal Steven Johnson's new book The Ghost Map will be published tomorrow. An account of an 1854 cholera outbreak on London's Broad Street, The Ghost Map is a magnificent combination of science thriller, cultural history, and celebration of cartography as a powerful tool to help us understand the dynamics of urban life. — Read the rest

And speaking of Steven Johnson (yes, that one), I missed his excellent item in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago where he lists his five favorite account of plagues. Steven should know a good plague tale–his new book, Ghost Map, due out next month, is about an 1854 cholera outbreak in London and what it tells us about the dynamics of cities. — Read the rest

My friend Steven Johnson scored the sweetest score of all scoredom last night, when he got to go on Jon Stewart's brilliant Daily Show to promote his book Everything Bad is Good for You, which explores the theme that video games and TV are making us smarter. — Read the rest

Gavin from G4 TV says:

Steven Johnson, author of the amazing book 'Everything Bad is Good For You' will be on today's "Attack of the Show" at 7e/4p, on G4. If you haven't read the book, it's incredible and succeeds in making the scientific argument that all those years playing video games improved something other than your hand-eye coordination.

Today's New York Times Magazine has an excerpt from Steven Johnson's new book, Everything Bad Is Good For You. I can't wait to read the whole book! From the excerpt, entitled "Watching TV Makes You Smarter":

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the "masses" want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want.

Steven Johnson, author of the wonderful books Emergence and Mind Wide Open, has just blogged soem info about his next book, "Everything Bad Is Good For You."

It's just me trying to marshal all the evidence I can to persuade the reader of a single long-term trend: that popular culture on average has been steadily growing more complex and cognitively challenging over the past thirty years.