The NY Times Book Review’s 100 notable books of 2006. Making the list are several kottke.org notable books: The Ghost Map, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Consider the Lobster, and The Blind Side.
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kottke.org posts about Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson has a new blog over at the NY Times on “the perils and promise of increasing urban density” but it’s TimesSelect which sucks both generally and for me specifically.
Looks like a good issue of the New Yorker this week, including a profile of Will Wright and a review of Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map.
outside.in is a hyperlocal blog/newspaper/
outside.in is a hyperlocal blog/newspaper/information aggregator that Steven Johnson is heading up. Here’s his announcement post on his blog. “Type in a zip code or address, and you’ll instantly see the conversations that the natives are having about their community.”
The Ghost Map
The Ghost Map is a book about:
- a bacterium
- the human body
- a geographical map
- a man
- a working friendship
- a household
- a city government
- a neighborhood
- a waste management system1
- an epidemic
- a city
- human civilization
You hooked yet? Well, you should be. As the narrative unfolds around the 1854 London cholera epidemic, author Steven Johnson weaves all of these social, geographical, and biological structures/webs/networks into a scientific parable for the contemporary world. The book is at its best when it zooms among these different scales in a Powers of Ten-like fashion (something Johnson calls The Long Zoom), demonstrating the interplay between them: the way the geography of a neighborhood affected the spread of a virus, how ideas spreading within a social context are like an epidemic, or the comparison between the organism of the city and the geography of a bacterial colony within the human colon. None of this is surprising if you’ve read anything about emergence, complexity, or social scale invariance, but Johnson effectively demonstrates how tightly coupled the development of (as well as our understanding of) viral epidemics and large cities were across all of these scales.
The other main theme I saw in the book is how inherently messy science is. Unlike many biographies, The Ghost Map doesn’t try to tie everything up into a nice little package to make a better story. The cholera epidemic and its resolution was sloppy; there was no aha! moment where everyone involved understood what was going on and knew what had to be done. But the scientific method applied by John Snow to the situation was solid and as more evidence became available over the years, his theory of and solution to cholera epidemics were revealed as actual fact. Johnson reminds us that that’s how science works most of the time; science is a process, not a set of facts and theories. During the recent debate in the US over evolution and intelligent design, I felt a reluctance on the part of scientists to admit to this messiness because it would give an opening to their detractors: “haha, so you admit you don’t know what’s going on at all!” Which is unfortunate, because science is powerful in its nuance and rough edges (in some ways, science is what happens at the margins) in helping us understand ourselves and the world we live in.
[1] Had Mark Kurlansky written this book, it would have been called “Shit: How Human Effluence Changed the World”. ↩
Steven Johnson on The Long Zoom, “the satellites tracking in on license-plate numbers in the spy movies; the Google maps in which a few clicks take you from a view of an entire region to the roof of your house; the opening shot in ‘Fight Club’ that pulls out from Edward Norton’s synapses all the way to his quivering face as he stares into the muzzle of a revolver; the fractal geometry of chaos theory in which each new scale reveals endless complexity.” And that’s just the introduction to an interview of Will Wright about his new Long Zoom game, Spore.
Trailer for Steven Johnson’s new book, The Ghost Map. If it’s uncool to love book trailers, so be it. Also, I’ve read the book (review forthcoming); it’s as interesting as it sounds in the trailer. (via sbj)
Part two of a conversation between Jesse James Garrett and Steven Johnson. Here’s part one. (thx, kevin)
Steven Johnson lists Five Things All Sane People Agree On About Blogs And Mainstream Journalism (So Can We Stop Talking About It Now?) Like Steven, I get frustrated with the rehashing of the same old points around this issue.
Jesse James Garrett talks with Steven Johnson about Interface Culture. I know part 2 is coming, but I just want this interview to go on forever. p.s. Dean!
Nicholas Carr weighs in on the serendipity of the web: “Once you create an engine - a machine - to produce serendipity, you destroy the essence of serendipity. It becomes something expected rather than something unexpected. Looking for serendipity? Just follow these easy links!” Previously on serendipity and the web: William McKeen and Steven Johnson.
Update: Steven Johnson responds to Nicholas Carr’s post. The circle of feedback continues.
Steven Johnson responds to (blasts? slams?) the endangered joy of serendipity piece I just linked to, arguing that the web is a much better serendipity engine than the library. (BTW, I think Steven is part machine himself…after posting that link, I took out the trash and ducked out to get something at the bodega around the corner and when I got back, there’s a message from him in my inbox with a link to his rant. Jesus.)
Update: This article appears to have dropped behind Nerve’s paywall. Sorry about that.
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