Entries tagged “steven johnson”

The big reason to make jokes is because they're the best way to get a quick read on the collective mind of the group you're talking to. The volume of the laugh is important, but so is the lag time. You can tell immediately if they're on your side, and if they're really following what you're saying, by how quickly the crowd responds to your jokes.

Steven Berlin Johnson, on how to judge the silent tone of a room when speaking in public. See also his comments, with mention of the fundamental role of call-and-response in African American public speaking (and performance) culture.

There's a fascinating conversation taking place across a couple of blogs, which Steven's post on leaving Brooklyn alterted me to. Douglas Rushkoff was mugged on Christmas Eve, and his wife Barbara blogged at length about her feelings at the time. (In short, "Screw this, we're leaving.")

But what's remarkable is that the entire conversation is happening so publicly. All of these people are semi-public, thanks to the work and writing that they do, but any of us can participate in the conversation. Somewhat predictably, the debate has essentially devolved into statistics and measurements being weighed against feelings and emotions.

I get defensive every time I see someone make the opposite move that I would, but in this case I was able to temper that by seeing the actual thoughts of people going through something terrifying and remarkable.

The upcoming release of Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map served as a useful prompt for Steven's list of the best books about plagues in the Wall Street Journal.

Steven's list includes titles such as Plagues and Peoples and The Hot Zone, which I've heard of but never read. My own preferences for discussions of catastrophic plague outbreaks lean more towards broad cultural analysis, so I have to mention two titles. Guns, Germs, Steel is one of the best books I've ever read, and beyond its discussion of the importance of germs, it gives readers an entirely different framework for thinking about the evolution and competition of cultures. Another title which I haven't finished yet but am thoroughly enjoying is 1491, which offers a unique perspective on pre-Columbian America. (Author Charles C. Mann has also actively participated in the book's Amazon forum as well, which is great to see.)

The HIV pandemic and the threat of malaria or SARS or ebola or avian flu all show that germs can still be a significant danger today. But what's interesting to me is that there's been such a dramatic change; For those of us in the developed world, something like smallpox isn't an everyday concern, let alone a mortal danger. So the looming threat of genocide due to a viral danger is mostly something we can read about as voyeurs without actually being terrified.

My interest in these books isn't purely morbid, though. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, the greatest danger that faced societies was the introduction of a foreign culture's physical threats. I think these books are deeply instructive in a modern context, though, because the greatest threat to cultures today comes from not intermingling. Whether it's expressed in agriculture ("hybrid vigor"), or in the context of a cocktail party (being a "social butterfly"), making an effort to avoid cultural isolation is rewarded by making an individual or a society more healthy. That's not to mention the bonus potential of additional opportunities, higher potential for recognition, a larger market for trade or commercial interests, and a broader audience for communication of messages.

For most of history, peopled feared outsiders because they really could pose a mortal threat to an existing culture. Now that the situation has reversed, we have to have put just as much energy into reaching out from within our monoculture, not just because of our desire to be inclusive, but also for the health of our own culture. I see examples of this every day, especially from parents, as they choose not to let their children use antibacterial soap or start to explore the increase in asthma or allergies among children. In each of these cases, getting exposed to the germs we used to strive to avoid is necessary to keep healthy.

So, are there any great plagueographies that I'm missing? This honestly isn't a topic that I know very well, and I'd love to learn more about what research is being done.

I'd started reading The Long Tail (You've read the blog, now buy the book!) by surprising myself with how excited I was to read the book; After all, I'd read the original article in Wired when it came out, and have been following Chris' blog since it started. Was there really anything new left? How could I still be interested in a topic that long ago became part of the scenery for the Web 2.0 and VC crowd?

In short, it's just plain good writing. My enjoyment of the book probably centers around the extensive amount of hard data used to gird the book's examples, as well as the pleasingly broad set of cultural influences and examples used to illustrate the effects of the Long Tail. I've criticized the technology industry often for its unrepentant insularity; The breadth of culture in The Long Tail amply evidences the fact that the phenomenon extends well past the confines of the traditional definition of "technology" as an industry.

Above all else, using a wider range of source material than even the seminal Wired article, along with the phenomenal amount of primary research into sales data, makes the book something very impressive and unique. The Long Tail is profoundly intellectually honest.

I'm on the record as a genuine admirer of Malcolm Gladwell, but I have to say that one of the most accurate of the persistent criticisms of his work is that it often substitutes qualitative anecdotes for qualitative evidence. Given that this is, to some degree, what Blink is about, I don't find this a particularly egregious habit. But it is nevertheless a valid point to raise, and The Long Tail is a stronger book for the near-scientific rigor of much of its analysis. (Informing this discipline, no doubt, is Chris's stints at Nature and Science.)

But here's an example of how the breadth of the narrative really got my gears turning. If you read this site back when I used to do my Daily Links, you might remember the history of house music I linked to. It's an encyclopedic and comprehensive resource that, along with the dictionary of samples, was one of my favorite links ever. Interestingly, house music comes up near the end of The Long Tail.

Now, I believe that, without hip hop and remix culture (of which house music is firmly a part), there would be no blogging. "Rip, Mix, and Burn" isn't merely a tenet of digital culture, it's among the fundamental principles of post-disco black music, which has consistently shaped contemporary culture. And that's important to note because The Long Tail isn't a book about business, or the Internet, or even economics. At least, it isn't merely about economics; It's a book about a change in culture.

Of course, The Tipping Point reached its, well... you know, after somehow morphing from being a book about cultural trends into being perceived as a business guide. So I'm not surprised that The Long Tail is packaged that way; The same audience might well purchase it for the same reasons. Indeed, Reed Hastings' back-cover blurb suggests that The Long Tail will sit on your shelf between The Tipping Point and Freakonomics. Presumably these books are all also bad and good for you.

But I digress. House music, you say? Let's go to the tape:

What was notable about the rise of house was that it was both a reaction to the bankruptcy of blockbuster culture and a vibrant culture of its own. DJs and clubs created a music industry that was radically different from pop music. Clubbing is really about surfing the Long Tail of dance music, and this ecosystem has seen the evolution of new models of innovation around it.

Naturally, there's a lengthier explanation of why this is so in the book, along with an acknowledgement of Umair Haque for contributions to the analysis. But what struck me as noteworthy in this, admittedly minor, part of the book was the pleasantly catholic set of influences. There's a lot of commonalities between the various long tail-based media that media hackers and culture jammers tend to gravitate towards.

I think it's no coincidence that many early bloggers (and, especially, many people who made blog-related tools) have been influenced by hip hop's remix culture, or by the multifaceted beat-matching culture of DJing. It's not just the methods of distribution that are similar; It's the aesthetic of mix-and-match, more lately referred to as Rip, Mix, and Burn.

Have I mentioned that, in addition to being an early investor in Six Apart and a skilled blogger, Joi Ito used to be a house DJ in Chicago? It's true.