Steven Johnson
Author of 9 books & TV host of How We Got To Now on PBS/BBC
Discussion
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
I'm the author of nine books about science, technology, and history -- including The Ghost Map and Where Good Ideas Come From. I've started a few tech companies over the years, including FEED and outside.in. But my latest project is being the co-creator and host of the Emmy-award winning PBS series, How We Got To Now (also a book.)
upvotesharetweet・
Jonny Miller
@jonnym1ller · Cofounder @Maptia
Hi Steven, I'm a big fan of your books! Would love to know what you think is the most interesting idea currently sitting in your spark file? Are there any slow hunches that you think might turn into something more one day?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@jonnym1ller Thanks, Jonny! I've got a lot of slow hunches simmering away, but one main focus right now is that I am researching a new project that is more in the vein of The Ghost Map -- ie. a single historical story (with many threads.) I've been describing it as The Ghost Map meets The Pirates Of The Caribbean :)
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
Hi Steven! What has been the most exciting part about hosting How We Got To Now?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@ems_hodge I think my favorite part about it was how intensely collaborative the whole process was. Writing books is a strangely isolated experience, particularly for someone like me who writes about the importance of collaboration. But with the show, we had an entire team of super-smart and fun people all contributing great ideas to the project. So that was incredibly rewarding.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@stevenbjohnson Hey :) What are the 3 resources that have most improved your life? (blogs, books, movies, advisors, etc)
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@bentossell Oh man, it's hard to pick three. In terms of books, maybe my favorite book of all time is Raymond Williams' The Country and the City, which taught me a great deal about how to write about the connections between technology, social change, and culture. E.O. Wilson's Consilience is also one of my favorites. And while many people may find this crazy, I get a tremendous amount of intellectual stimulation out of Twitter -- mostly from links that people share to interesting articles, books, albums, talks, etc. Not unlike Product Hunt!
Marcus Vorwaller
@zzzmarcus · Software Developer, Seattle, WA
@stevenbjohnson What role, if any, do you see artificial intelligence playing in innovation now or in the near future? Are there any companies or groups actively using AI to generate new ideas or is that something that hasn't yet come around?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@zzzmarcus I'm not an expert in this realm, though I am actually reading Superintelligence right now, but I would think one of the first applications would be on the engineering side of innovation: in other words, we have this idea for this product, let's have the AI "evolve" the most efficient possible design for it, given these constraints. But there are also lighter forms of AI that can be useful for brainstorming -- if you look at my posts about using Devonthink as a kind of research collaborator there's a hint of that kind of soft AI there.
Nathan Bashaw
@nbashaw · Co-founder and CEO of Hardbound
On twitter recently you said you think the ebook experience has stagnated — I agree! I'm curious, what do you think the biggest problems / missed opportunities are?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@nbashaw Well, first off, it has taken the Kindle team a ridiculously long time to get some basic typographic stuff right, which is very frustrating. But more to the point, it's still incredibly awkward to use e-books for research. Just trying to get your highlights out of the Kindle, with bibliographic data, is crazy difficult. My current workflow with research relies of 3-4 different applications, including the Kindle site where the highlights are stored. It should be much easier. In addition, Google Books has taken a big step backwards with many of its scanned books no longer accessible even if they are in the public domain. Now, many of these issues are partially because orgs like the Author's Guild and the publishing houses have been very protective about digital content because of what happened to the music world, so it's not all Amazon or Google's fault.
Nicki Friis
@nickifriisw · Ideanote
Hey Steven, why is focusing on customer experience a good idea?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@nickifriisw Not really an expert in this, but I would think it's pretty obvious, right: the line between "experience" and "product" gets blurrier and blurrier over time.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Hi Steven!
What's something you used to fervently believe but now see as misguided?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@eriktorenberg Well, not so much "misguided" but I was a fervent believer that there were going to be many successful and profitable businesses in the "hyperlocal" community and news space -- that's why I co-founded outside.in about ten years ago. But it turned out to be much harder than we thought, and to date, no one has quite cracked it.
Melissa Joy Kong
@melissajoykong · Content, Product Hunt
You've posed the question, "What unlikely sequence of events has led me to this point?" So...
1. What do you consider to be your defining accomplishment thus far?
2. What unlikely sequence of events helped you accomplish that thing?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@melissajoykong I suppose I'm most proud of the fact that both the show *and* the book for How We Got To Now were so well received. I really wanted them to stand on their own, and not have one feel derivative of the other. And the long chain of events that led to HWGTN -- it's too long a story, but like anything it involved some crazy social network connections. When we were raising money for outside.in, I took a meeting with a guy who also happened to be on the board of a documentary TV production company. He ended up passing on investing, but read a few of my books, and recommended that I meet with the TV folks to talk about a series -- and then four years later, after many more chance conversations, we finally got to do it!
Melissa Joy Kong
@melissajoykong · Content, Product Hunt
If "How We Got to Now" was produced in 100 years instead of today, what invention(s) do you think would make the cut that are now/will soon achieve scale in the world?
M
Steven Johnson
@stevenbjohnson · Author
@melissajoykong Solar panels! We are right on the cusp of a dramatic change towards renewable energy sources, lead by solar. In a hundred years, kids will be totally baffled by the idea that we used to power our machines and lights by burning 20-million-year-old plants when the sun is showering us with so much energy for free every day.