A few weeks ago I went out to L.A. to tape a roundtable discussion on the future for Time Magazine's annual "What's Next?" issue. It's on the stands now, and it features a full-height picture of me looking gravely concerned about something (presumably the future.) It's a fun conversation, covering lots of different issues. I ride a few hobby-horses that most of you are already familiar with, but there are also a couple of riffs that are new ones. There's an edited version (without photos) here, and an unedited audio podcast here.
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The Basics
- I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of five books. In early 2007 I went and foolishly got myself a day job running the hyperlocal community site, outside.in that I co-founded the year before. We spend most of the year in Park Slope, Brooklyn, though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbj6668 at earthlink dot net. Media requests should go to Matthew.Venzon at us.penguingroup dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)
Live SBJ
StoryMap
Recent Essays
- The War On Error
Discover column on the web's bottom-up response to Katrina. - Air Purifiers For Data Smog
Discover column on software that helps you focus. - Why The Web Is Like A Rain Forest.
Discover column on Web 2.0. - Finding "Lost"
London Times piece on the mysterious hit show "Lost." - The Urban Long Tail
Discover column on the diversity of cities.
My Books
The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!
Downloaded the podcast and listened to it today while running. Now please post the antidote for removing that one woman's awful, insinuating voice from my skull. "I mean, whaaaaat is goooooing onnnnnn?"
In a less mean-spirited vein, I often wonder whether these sorts of roundtables, which often strive for political balance, wouldn't be more probing or engaging if the participants represented a narrower range of opinions. In that sense, I think that whatever conversations happen in the spaces of the so-called "magic middle" may actually signify the death knell of roundtables like this one. And I'm not entirely sure whether that's a step away from a greater pluralism; maybe it's just a rejection of the ersatz pluralism that we see everyday on tv and in magazines.
Posted by: Rob | March 16, 2006 at 08:08 PM
So is it suposed to be like the Real World? All of you have the different personalities and you come to discuss what's going on with society? By the way, I think the picture is great-especially the woman with her posture in check. She kind of looks like she's posing for an O Magazine pictorial.
Posted by: Suburbia in the City | March 17, 2006 at 12:36 PM
Posing for an O magazine pictorial?
More like a 'Desperate Housewives' promo.
A great discussion nonetheless.
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