Steven Berlin Johnson
Steven Johnson is a brilliant cross-disciplinary thinker, a social critic, a technologist, and an author of four books. His writings have influenced everything from the way political campaigns use the internet, to cutting-edge ideas in urban planning, to the battle against 21st-century terrorism.
Steven’s latest work, the national bestseller “Everything Bad Is Good For You”, was one of the most talked about books of 2005, arguing that the popular culture we love to hate—TV, movies, video games—are getting better and are making us (and our children) smarter. The book builds on brain research Steven investigated in his previous bestseller “Mind Wide Open: Your Brain And The Neuroscience of Everyday Life”. In that book, he uses his own personality as the test case for describing how the new brain science is yielding new understandings of human personality. “Mind Wide Open” takes otherwise esoteric ideas from neuroscience and explains their practical relevance to everyday life: office politics, creative thinking, family conflicts, and emotional decision-making. "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software" was on four prestigious best book of the year lists and was named a New York Times Notable Book. It was a finalist for the 2002 Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. His first book, “Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate”, investigates computer interfaces, not how they help us work by adapting to our ways of thinking and our real-world metaphors, but rather how our thinking and world view are altered by our computer interfaces.
Many people know Steven best as a maven of the internet. He was the cofounder and editor-in-chief of FEED, the revolutionary web magazine blending technology, science and culture with a truly innovative interface. Newsweek named him one of the Fifty People Who Matter Most on the Internet. In addition to his columns, he has published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and other periodicals. He’s also appeared on many high-profile televisions programs, including “The Charlie Rose Show”, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”, and “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer”.
Steven is a contributing editor for Wired magazine and a monthly columnist for Discover magazine. He is also a Distinguished Writer In Residence at the New York University Department of Journalism.
