stevenberlinjohnson.com: Colbert, The Morning After

So I had my six minutes in the ring with Stephen Colbert last night. Those television interviews are always slightly surreal -- the conversation feels like it lasts about thirty seconds as you're in the middle of it, and of course you have to surrender any hope of actually getting to make a coherent presentation of your argument. But it’s even more surreal when the person you're talking to is actually in character, pretending to be a "professional idiot" (as Colbert himself described his onscreen persona during our one minute chat before the show.)

But in the end, he wasn’t too over-the-top with his O'Reilly imitation in our chat last night. He played it a bit straighter than I had expected, which made the conversation a little easier. The interesting twist was that he chose not to do the "you're destroying the youth of America" rant that you might have expected him to do; in fact, his major in character joke was that he agreed with my "argument" that books are a waste of time. (By the way, if you’re just coming to the site for the first time, that’s not my argument at all, of course.) Just the like Jon Stewart appearance, I managed to get a couple of laughs on my own, which is of course immensely satisfying, and also got to put in a good word for Civilization IV and Spore. So all in all, a fun night.

I'm traveling most of today, so won't be able to track down links to torrents or YouTube versions of the interview, but if any of you happen to find one, maybe you could post a link in the comment threads here. It'll air again today a few times, including at 7:30 I think -- on the east coast at least.

Updated, Saturday June 10: Thanks for all the email and posts; glad to hear people enjoyed the appearance. Just one clarification: I am well aware that the average gamer is now 30 years old -- I mention that fact in the book, and have said it in interviews a thousand times. My references to "what the twelve-year-olds" are up to was in specific response to Colbert's initial comment about how he keeps hearing that "kids are dumb." So while it's true that games are no longer exclusively played by kids; it's also true -- and more relevant to the context of that interview -- that kids are still heavily into games, and playing remarkably complicated titles. Hence the focus on twelve-year-olds.

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.)

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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!

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Colbert, The Morning After

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