“when one looks at innovation in nature and in culture, environments that build walls around good ideas tend to be less innovative… — Steven Johnson Good ideas Copy Share Image
As much as we sometimes roll our eyes at the ivory-tower isolation of universities, they continue to serve as remarkable engines of… — Steven Johnson Education Copy Share Image
The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
Silicon-based life may be impossible for one other reason: silicon bonds readily dissolve in water. — Steven Johnson Evolution Copy Share Image
Nothing really says ... interactivity - which was so exciting and captures the real, the Web Zeitgeist of 1995 - than 'Click… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
“What made Bell Labs fundamentally different had as much to do with antitrust law as the geniuses it attracted.” — Steven Johnson Antitrust Copy Share Image
Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by… — Steven Johnson Borders Copy Share Image
We are strangely biased, as individuals and media institutions, to focus on big sudden changes, whether good or bad - amazing breakthroughs,… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
Some great minds become great by turning the rubble of an exploded paradigm into something consistent and meaningful. Others become great by… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
“Those early spectacles were called roidi da ogli, meaning “disks for the eyes.” Thanks to their resemblance to lentil beans—lentes in Latin—the… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
Every childhood has its talismans, the sacred objects that look innocuous enough to the outside world, but that trigger an onslaught of… — Steven Johnson Child Copy Share Image
I suspect millions of people from my generation probably have comparable stories to tell: if not of sports simulations then of Dungeons… — Steven Johnson Chess Copy Share Image
“De Forest was wrong about the utility of gas as a detector, but he kept probing at the edges of that error,… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
“If we're going to survive as a planet with more than 6 billion people without destroying the complex balance of our natural… — Steven Johnson Mother nature Copy Share Image
“In the popular folklore of American history, there is a sense in which the founders’ various achievements in natural philosophy—Franklin’s electrical experiments,… — Steven Johnson American history Copy Share Image
“Bill Gates (and his successor at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie) are famous for taking annual reading vacations. During the year they deliberately cultivate… — Steven Johnson Books Copy Share Image
Most new movements start this way: hundreds or thousands of individuals and groups, working in different fields and different locations, start thinking… — Steven Johnson Change Copy Share Image
This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in… — Steven Johnson Age Copy Share Image
One of the stories I love is how Gutenberg’s printing press set off this interesting chain reaction, where all of a sudden… — Steven Johnson Book Copy Share Image
“From am overall eclsyste,s perspective, if you're going to have 10million human beings trying to share an environment with other life-forms, it's… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
The economics of television syndication and DVD sales mean that there's a tremendous financial pressure to make programs that can be watched… — Steven Johnson Aliases Copy Share Image
“2Do not mistake these multiple trends--the energy flows of metropolitan growth, the new taste for tea, the nascent, half-formed awareness of mass… — Steven Johnson Cause and effect Copy Share Image
“Over generations, the gene pool of the first farmers became increasingly dominated by individuals who could drink beer on a regular basis.… — Steven Johnson Beer drinkers Copy Share Image
It is extraordinary how safe flying has become. You are now statistically more likely to be elected president of the United States… — Steven Johnson Achievement Copy Share Image
Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio - all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
In a peer network, no one is officially in charge. It doesn't have a command hierarchy. It doesn't have a boss. So,… — Steven Johnson Boss Copy Share Image
Most of the time, criticism that takes pop culture seriously involves performing some kind of symbolic analysis, decoding the work to demonstrate… — Steven Johnson Analysis Copy Share Image
“Before tube amplifiers, the limits of our vocal chords made it difficult to speak to more than a thousand people at a… — Steven Johnson Time Copy Share Image
One of the founding moments of public health in the 19th century effectively poisoned the water supply of London much more effectively… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
“Radios, vacuum tubes, transistors, televisions, solar cells, coaxial cables, laser beams, microprocessors, computers, cell phones, fiber optics—all these essential tools of modern… — Steven Johnson Cell phone Copy Share Image
This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network itself… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
“Berners-Lee was supremely lucky in the work environment he had settled into, the Swiss particle physics lab CERN. It took him ten… — Steven Johnson History Copy Share Image
“The wetland created by the beaver, like the thriving platform created by the Twitter founders, invites variation because it is an open… — Steven Johnson Twitter Copy Share Image
For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the 'masses'… — Steven Johnson Assumption Copy Share Image
“The birth of the civil rights movement was intimately bound up in the spread of jazz music throughout the United States. It… — Steven Johnson African americans Copy Share Image
How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so… — Steven Johnson Copy Share Image
