Got into London in a driving rainstorm at around 6 AM this morning, but by the time I woke up in my hotel room, around noon, it was a lovely early winter day here: a brisk wind, but absolutely crystal clear skies, and everybody out doing their holiday shopping. I always try to take a walk across the river when I'm here -- just to take stock of what's changed -- and today I walked the newish Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridges for the first time. It occured to me that a pedestrian bridge over a river in a city center is one of the great, sacred urban experiences: you're in the middle of everything, and yet weirdly removed at the same time. (I suspect the High Line will have some of this feeling, even without the river.) Incredible number of cranes visible in The City proper, which was interesting to see after reading over lunch in the Sunday Times how London has replaced NYC as the finance capital of the world. What's more, it was just around dusk here, and there was a full moon hanging over the river as well. I took a snap with the camera phone when I got back to my hotel, but of course it doesn't capture it at all. Still, it's the view from my window.
The Basics
- I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of seven books, and co-founder of three web sites. We spend most of the year in Marin County, California though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbeej 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.)
My Books
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
An exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books. Sold more copies in hardcover than anything else I've written.The Invention of Air
The story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals.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!
Steven,
I am a graduate architecture student at Florida International University in Miami
currently I am working on my thesis project. I am trying to adopt emergence system to create architectural space similar to how the Emergence Design derives their form but as a urban gesture. the question I have for you is when you say simple units what exactly is so simple about ant or any organisms? The unit i have choosen for my self organizing system is base on a helix which isn't considered a simple element. i am wondering if by simple you mean the same or having no self direction rather than as structural form. thanks.
p.s. if you can understand my email than you truly have a knack for understanding decentralized system .
Posted by: Robert Ceballos | December 03, 2006 at 02:43 PM
Hello Steven,
My name is Natália. I’m 28 years old and i am a graduate education student at University of Minho in Portugal.
I’d like to excuse me because I don’t speak English very well.
I’ve been working on my thesis project about videogames and their educational effects. That’s a emergence question in my country and i thought your book “Everything bad is good for you” (in Portuguese “Tudo o que é mau faz bem”) sensational!
That’s why I decided to develop the theme of what the videogames have to teach in classroom, because I’m a teacher and researcher about Educational Technology.
I wish I like to speak with you by e-mail about videogames studies and felicity you for you wonderful works!
Posted by: Natália Marques | December 04, 2006 at 03:04 AM
It’s Natália again.
My electronic address is: natalia.marques@madeira-edu.pt
Goodbye!
Posted by: Natália Marques | December 04, 2006 at 03:08 AM
My name is Brüno Schnaut and I am being a graduate student at Freie Universität Berlin, performing semantic virtual architecture studies with a specialty in the psychotopography of the gay dance floor, make it groovy now.
Firstly let me please say how handsome you have looked in today's edition of Zeitschrift New York Times, dressed all in gangsta gear, so to speak, out on the violent streets of Slope Park. Affengeil!
I have read your book "Everything Evil is Nice" and I agree that all tiresome bourgeois books must be burned in the streets, although not of course as in the Nazi time in which evil was constructed to be really really bad and therefore not good at all.
Please let us correspond and perhaps meet sometime in Berlin! I will show you a funky time!
Posted by: Alex Ross | December 04, 2006 at 07:44 AM
That's a view I know well (from slightly different angles).
Spot the Gherkin....
(http://uk.news.yahoo.com/15092006/325/swiss-re-mulls-sale-gherkin.html)
Incidentally, you are experiencing the calm after the storm. The end of last week and into the weekend was desperately poor weather. But now we have that delicious sharply cold clarity in the air.
Posted by: Mikeachim | December 04, 2006 at 03:35 PM
(Thanks to some dubious copy-and-pasting on my part, you may have to remove an end-bracket to get that link to work.
Verily do I stink at this e-malarkey).
Posted by: Mikeachim | December 04, 2006 at 03:38 PM
Spot the (blurred) Oxo Tower too.
Are you in London for business? Booksigning maybe...
Posted by: Matt_c | December 05, 2006 at 04:30 AM
Call next time
Posted by: Oliver Morton | December 07, 2006 at 05:37 AM
London at this time of the year is definitely at its most beautiful! That photo made me quite homesick!
Posted by: Natasha | December 08, 2006 at 09:12 PM
London is always beautiful!!!
We are from;
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Posted by: Business for sale | December 10, 2006 at 04:43 AM
That is a good picture, please send more.
I need to visit there one day.
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