Steven Johnson: Good Ideas Come Slowly, Surprisingly, and at Coffee Houses
Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Thursday, Sep 23, 2010
In his new book, “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Steven Johnson is thinking a lot about where and how “ideas have sex,” from the caffeinated coffee houses of 19th century London to the meme-accelerating world wide web. The big idea? That innovation isn’t born out of “Eureka!” moments, but are the result of lots of intermingling between unlike people and disciplines in what he calls “the liquid network,” and come about over time, through (another coinage) “the slow hunch.”
His terms aside, it’s not a new idea by any means. But that’s the point. What remains to be seen is whether idea-spreading communities like those of the Internet can be stifling, not helpful, to the spread of ideas. If “chance favors the connected mind,” what happens when we lose “chance” to algorithms that decide what we should watch or who we should be friends with? And no matter how many good ideas are flowing through our inbox, can they germinate if there are too many of them?
Turn off a distraction or two and check out Johnson’s talk at TED, the kind of place made for – and made of – Johnsonesque ideas.
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